Caeleb Dressel will be swimming at the World Short Course Championships next month.
A sentence that would have seemed unnecessary, a foregone conclusion, just a few years ago. One that recently hadn’t seemed quite so certain.
That is not due to any lack of talent. His 2019 World Championship performance was one of the finest in history; four individual gold medals, two relay gold medals, one individual world record and one relay world record. In his four individual events, the margins between his swims and the respective world records were 0.13 seconds in the 50 free, 0.05 seconds in the 100 free, 0.08 seconds in the 50 fly, and -0.32 seconds in the 100 fly.
Dressel won all three of his individual events at the Olympic Games in Tokyo two years later. He set two more world records, in the 100 fly and men’s 4×100 medley relay, and two Olympic records, in the 50 free and 100 free. There were five gold medals, a half second margin of victory in the 50 free, and the crown of best active male swimmer in the world.
Things changed in 2022. On the fourth day of competition, Dressel abruptly withdrew from the remainder of the meet. He had won the men’s 4×100 free relay and the 50 fly at that point, and was the second seed heading into the 100 free semi-finals.
His comments on social media two months later explained why. “I know I can have swimming and happiness,” he wrote, but the balance had tilted recently, the world not quite at rights. “I had them both at one point in my life and I’m working on it. If you need a break, take one”.
His lasted eight months. Dressel had felt the pressure before Tokyo, his first Olympics as Team USA’s male star, the Phelps-apparent for a nation that needed one, its quadrennial obsession with swimming demanding nothing but the best. He finally went on his honeymoon, a year and a half after he and his wife Meghan got married in February 2021. He hiked the Appalachian Trail. He visited Iceland.
He returned to competition in May 2023, then swam at the 2023 U.S. National Championships. He made the podium in the 50 fly, finishing third, but his times were still some way off his world-beating best. His four main events, the ones he swept in 2019 – the 50 free, 100 free, 50 fly, and 100 fly – were won by four different swimmers at the World Championships in 2023. Dressel’s 2019 times would have won all four.
Dressel after winning the men’s 100 free at the 18th FINA World Championships, Gwangju
Courtesy of Rafael Domeyko
He was back for the Olympic year, but the aura of invincibility was gone. He missed the U.S. team in the 100 free despite a competitive time of 47.53 in the final at U.S. Olympic Trials, and went into Paris as neither the favorite, nor the season-leader, in either the 50 free or 100 fly.
Dressel made the final in the 50 free, finishing 6th in a time of 21.61, a fractional 0.04 seconds away from denying Florent Manaudou a homecoming podium. But with the semi-finals of the 100 fly coming in the same session as the semi-finals of the 50 free, he bowed out of the former in 13th: his Trials time would have won bronze in the final.
That remains his sole international appearance since 2022. Like several U.S. stars, including Ryan Murphy and Nic Fink, he stated an intention to skip the 2025 World Championships, and, by extension, the 2026 Pan Pacific Championships (the team for which was selected based on the 2025 World Trials meet). Just like in 2023, he popped up with a podium finish in the 50 fly at the U.S. National Championships in the summer, but was in 2023 form rather than 2024 form.
He swam that same meet again this past summer, but there was fire and steel to his swims. He won the 50 free in 21.35 and the 100 free in 47.70, and placed second in the 50 fly (22.86) and 100 fly (50.45). Those times would have won gold, bronze, bronze, and silver, respectively, at the 2026 Pan Pacific Championships held two weeks later.
That meet was a portent for things to come. A solid showing at the UVA SCM Prep Meet in mid-October made him one to watch at the trials for the World Short Course Championships, and he looked as locked-in as at any point in the last five years once that meet kicked off last week.
But first, a segue. Dressel’s last real major short course meet was the final of the 2020 season of the International Swim League. He swam four meets, including the final, in the league the following year, but the 2021 edition was a strange place. Trying out a draft system that never quite made sense, with several athletes drafted who never swam, those that did came into a league notable for its absences, populated by the ghosts of those taking time off after a five-year Olympic cycle. Dressel did swim, but was clearly training through the season and his times reflected that fact.
The 2021 season could not quite live up to the hype, the atmosphere, the importance of the 2020 version. With the European Championships, Olympic Games, and World Short Course Championships all postponed, the ISL was the competition of 2020.
And its star, undoubtedly, had been Dressel. He scored a staggering 90.5 points in the semi-final, 96 points in the final, and 463.5 overall across six matches. He led the individual standings by more than 100 points, and had more than double the points of anyone from #10 down. In the final, he was responsible for 40% of Cali Condors’ male points.
Dressel after setting the 100 IM World Record at the 2020 ISL final. Courtesy of Mike Lewis
That final performance was possibly his zenith. He set world records in the 100 fly and 50 free, and one in the 100 IM that still lives somewhere between bigfoot sightings and the Antarctic ice wall for its believability. He won five individual events from five, with an ease that reminds you just how difficult doing that actually is.
Of the times he swam in that final in Budapest, all but one were personal bests. The one miss, the 50 fly, had been a strangely muted moment. Co-world record holders Nicolas Santos and Szebasztian Szabo were not in the field, their teams missing the final. Dressel only just missed his American record of 22.04 in a time of 22.09, fast enough to win by over two tenths of a second, but the fireworks had been left unlit, the TV turned back to grayscale.
Six years on, poetically, he has come full circle. Dressel swam the same five events at the World Short Course Championship Trials last week as he did in that ISL final six years ago, and swam one personal best.
In the 50 fly.
Not a small one either, mind. He hacked off four tenths of a second, becoming the #4 performer in history in a time of 21.62. Two years before that would have been a world record; two days before and it would have been an American record, well under Tom Shields‘ former standard of 21.99.
Ilya Kharun had already shattered the latter with a 21.61 in prelims, and he lowered it further to 21.46 in the final. He, Noe Ponti (21.32), and Egor Kornev (21.28) make for a formidable trio for any podium hopeful to overcome in the event, even despite Dressel’s vertiginous ascent.
But for him, this is about more than just hardware. He is 30 now, a decade on from his first Olympic medals (the men’s 4×100 free relay and 4×100 medley relay in Rio) and nine years removed from his first world title. He won his first NCAA title in the 50 free 11 years ago. Elite sport is not kind, and pays no heed to the achievements of yesteryear. Performing now is all that matters.
And he did. With aplomb. He looked good in Westmont, swimming significantly faster than he had at the UVA SCM Prep Meet two weeks earlier. He made the U.S. team in the 50 fly (21.62), 50 free (20.57), and 100 IM (50.34), with third-place finishes in the 100 free (45.65) and 100 fly (48.57). In the latter he missed out by just 0.01 seconds, but he will be on the men’s 4×100 free relay team thanks to his performance in the former, with a team that looks destined to shatter the world record.
A prediction: every single one of his times from last week would qualify for the final at the World Short Course Championships next month. Dressel can be harshly judged based on what he used to be, a swimmer whose only competition was himself, rather than what he is now. And what he is now is an exceptional swimmer, one who came into Westmont last week and threw down elite swims across five events.
Four of the five, all bar the 100 free, rank him in the top five in the world this season. His 100 free ranks eighth. His 100 IM time of 50.34, coming on the back of a fairly brutal triple with the 100 fly and 50 free on the first day, is 12th-fastest swim in history.
Caeleb Dressel at the 2026 U.S. World Short Course Championship Trials. Courtesy of Jack Spitser
He was out under world record pace in that swim, too. The world record pace that he set when dismantling the field in the ISL final six years ago. He was over a second slower on the second half of the race this time, but that first 50 just makes you think there could be something really special bubbling under the surface here, an eruption to make everyone go wow and woah and that knocked my socks clean off.
That feeling is not limited to the 100 IM. The World Short Course Championships will not have the same pressures as the Olympics did in 2024. It is a more low-key competition, fewer of the world’s eyes laser-focused on every move. It seems better suited for him to thrive.
Truthfully, Dressel could walk away from Beijing with zero individual medals and still have had this short course season be a success. He had a better meet last week than he did at the 2018 World Short Course Championships, still just 22 and hungry, itching to fill the gap left by Phelps’ retirement two years before, and the competition was stronger here, too. He is now the elder statesman, the kids who watched his ascent now full throttle on theirs, and he still showed that he had a trick or two to teach them.
He beat Jack Alexy in the 50 free, the man who took both his sprint free mantle and his American record in the 100 free. Dressel is also arguably now the favorite for the 100 IM in Beijing. His swim in Westmont, full of power and haste and a disdain for the consequences of lactic acid buildup, was the first time we have seen him dominate an event in that way since his 2021 peak.
So now we look forward. There is a feeling that we are not quite sure what he can do next month. Not in the Paris sense, wondering whether he can be the same dominant force he was before, coming back to the boxing ring to find that everyone else now has a baseball bat; but in the breathless, giddy anticipation of something new. Could he make a run at his 100 IM record? Is he a serious threat to the 50 fly crown, up against the three fastest swimmers in history? How will he match up against Jordan Crooks, Cam McEvoy, and Egor Kornev in the 50 free, in what Vegas is already billing as the splashiest’n’dashiest of splash’n’dashes.
Dressel has just swum his first lifetime best for five years, and qualified for his first international team for two and a half. He no longer has the buffer to the rest of the world that he used to; he has ascended the mountain to find that the glaciers that had ensured his solitude are gone. He is no longer alone amongst the clouds. But crucially, he is back amongst them once again.
