“No one deserves this more and I’m just over the moon for him.” “I’m just so stoked for Nic,” Wilson said after the race, an indication of the esteem Fink is held in by his peers. “I just knew things were going to click for that race.”įink finished first with a time of 2:07.55, almost a second ahead of that man Wilson, the very same who edged him in the 100.
“If anyone was going to out-touch me, they were going to have to be going pretty fast,” he said. “It actually kind of gave me some confidence going into the 200.” Fink flies in the 200mįink admits to not feeling great in the preliminary rounds of the 200 in Nebraska, perhaps still “swimming out the 100.” But he knew he was fast enough going into the final.
“That’s why I didn’t go into panic mode for the 200 and the wheels didn’t come off,” said Fink, who had only 48 hours between the loss in the 100 and his last chance to qualify for Tokyo 2020 (in the 200m) and reach his first Olympics. It’s definitely a bummer to get out-touched by something you couldn’t even see, but I was where I wanted to be and I just got out-touched.
“But I learned what I could from the race and, really, I got my second fastest time ever, my second time under 59. “In 2016, finishing the way I did after being seeded in the top-two, I couldn't even walk out of there with my head held high,” he admitted after being denied by one of the closest one-two-three finishes in U.S. He leaned on his experience and found that silver lining cockeyed optimists all like to talk about on cloudy days. Plowing disappointment into driveįink found the bright side. This was his first race back at the meet since five years before when he arrived as one of the odds-on favourites in the same two races only to finish seventh in both and miss out on the Rio 2016 Games. He didn’t feel cursed because he’d had nothing but misery up to that point at the U.S. But Fink didn’t fall apart after having missed by that little. A hair’s breadth? It’s less time than it takes to blink. What is that, really? A fingernail clipping. “I threw myself a pity party for about an hour and a half and then it was business as usual,” insisted Fink, who was out-touched by six hundredths of a second by Wilson. But when he touched the wall in the 100m finals, the number next to his name on the electronic board was 3 – and only two booked tickets to Tokyo.īeing caught on the outside looking in by such an agonisingly thin amount of sub-seconds might have ruined a man with lesser grit, or, sure, one of a younger age. Olympic Team Swim Trials in Omaha, Nebraska this June, he was tipped to take the 100m breast and qualify for Tokyo in both the individual breaststroke distances. And he’s still got room in there to shave off those slivers of seconds that make the difference between podiums and regrets in the rarefied Olympic air.īetween Fink and the world’s best time this year, set by Australaian Zac Stubbtley-Cook, is a bit over one second.Īnd Fink knows, better than most, about the cruelty of those margins. This is not the case with Fink, or his USA teammate in the 200m in Tokyo, Andrew Wilson - one year his junior at 27.įink's got the sixth fastest time in the world in 2021 in the 200m – the event he will compete in at the Tokyo Games.
#Nick fink jumping out of pool code#
Sure, these qualities stand for something, but they’re also code for slower than you once were. In the world of athletic pursuits, words like experienced and veteran, or seasoned, can be backhanded compliments. He was, by his own admission, a late bloomer and he didn’t really hit his stride until his last year at the University of Georgia, when he finished second in the nation in the 100m and fourth in the 200. “Experience goes a long way in the breaststroke,” added Fink, a New Jersey native who followed his sister, older by one year, into the water.
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