Diary Updates
Crippen's Race Results
400m Individual Medley
Heats: Friday, Sept. 15 - 8th Place
Finals: Saturday, Sept. 16 - 6th Place
Diary Entry Number 1 - Introduction
Hi everyone I'm Maddy.
I'm thrilled about making the Olympic team. It is a huge relief. I am definitely excited to go. It's been three years of hoping, a lot of going back and forth in my head. By the end, I just wanted it to come because I was tired of not knowing. I'm glad it's here and I'm excited to go over to Sydney. It's going to be fun. I left on Sunday, Aug. 20, for Pasadena and I was in Pasadena until Sept. 1. In Pasadena, we trained in the Rose Bowl Aquatic Center. We also went down to San Diego to the Olympic Training Center for a few days to do processing.
We will leave for Sydney on Sept. 1 and we'll check into the village and then head up to Brisbane where we have a camp up there for about a week and a half. We'll come back down to the village on the 13th. The games start on the 15th, and I swim on the 16th. Then I have a few weeks to play. I'm excited about that. It will be a good time.
Q & A from Maddy Crippen's Pre-Olympic Press Conference at Villanova
Q: Explain what was going through your mind when it was time to line up to swim at Olympic Swim Trials?
Maddy: It the past three years, especially in the past two years, I've worried a little bit too much about my competition and I haven't concentrated enough on my own race which is what got me to the level I was at, at the beginning. I did that in the morning heat also. I won my heat but I didn't win it very easily and I had to work hard at it because I took out my first 100 meters too fast. It worried me going into the night, because I took it out so fast that by the fourth 100 I was very tired. Behind the curtain when I am getting ready to go out, I'm pretty good friends with a lot of the people I swim against, so I am usually one of the ones who is laughing and joking back there a lot of the time. This time (at the trials) I wasn't. I stuck to myself and turned my music up as loud as it could go so I couldn't hear anything. I couldn't hear the music. I couldn't hear when they were announcing our names and when they were announcing my name. As soon as I knew they were done announcing my name, I took my headphones off and just concentrated on my own lane, tried to block out everyone else, and swim my own race. I did that. It was the first time I did that in a while, and I think it paid off.
Q: Do you have a strategy going into Sydney
Maddy: I am pretty good with four even strokes. My weakest if people look at me would probably be freestyle or backstroke. I'm strong enough that I have been able to adjust at times to my competition. I think that's hurt me in the past two years, especially Kristina Teuscher, who got third at trials but has beaten me on a consistent basis this whole year. I know that she's not the best butterflyer so I would always try to go out real fast and die. I didn't do that at trials and I think that's what helped me. I have swam internationally for the past three years and there is a Japanese girl, a Canadian girl, and a girl from Europe. They are pretty much the three going in and then myself, and Kaitlin (the other American). I know them and I know how they race, but I am going to do my own thing and race my own race.
Q: After you are done in Sydney, what are you going to do?
Maddy: I don't know and I don't plan on knowing. I am going to stay because one of my friends is actually studying abroad out there. We are getting kicked out of the Olympic Village on Sept. 29, so we can either leave on Sept. 29 or stay until Oct. 8. There no air flights back between that time. But I don't have to go to school, so I am planning on staying in Sydney for a while. All of the Olympic swimmers have been invited to the Caiman Islands, so I am going there sometime in October or November. I'm also going to Disney World for a weekend because all of the Olympic swimmers have been invited there. And I am going to the White House in November. They are the three major plans I have.
Q: What do you do to prepare physically? You just don't do pool work do you?
Maddy: A normal day in the summer is 6:00-9:00 a.m. practice. That is pretty much all land work. I come home and sleep from 10:00-12:00, and then I go back to the pool at 1:00 for a 1:00-3:00 p.m. practice. Then I go back to Germantown Academy, because we do most of that work outside in the summer, and either run, do spin bike, or stair master. I do that six days a week. I do that for about 45-50 minutes depending on the time of year. Then I do weight training for about an hour. Usually I am at the pool until 5:30 or 6:00 at night.
