Cal alum Nathan Adrian leads USA to Relay Gold in Day 1 of FINA World Swimming Championships

Even if you only visit CGB for the Cal Football and Men’s Basketball news, casual Cal Olympic sports fans know that the Golden Bears are quite dominant in the water, particularly these big international swim meets like the Olympics or this week’s 18th FINA World Swimming Championships from Gwangju, South Korea.

A total of 12 Cal Bears, past and current, plus both Cal head coaches will represent the Blue and Gold (as well as their respective countries) in the week long event from July 21st to 28th. 8 Cal Bears are on Team USA with Cal men’s head coach Dave Durden leading the USA men’s team (a position that he will repeat next Summer for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics) and Cal women’s head coach Teri McKeever being an assistant coach for the USA women’s squad. The swimming USA Bears are Calympians Nathan Adrian, Ryan Murphy, Josh Prenot, Jacob Pebley, Kathleen Baker, and Abbey Weitzeil as well as hopeful 2020 Calympians in the recently graduated Andrew Seliskar and Katie McLaughlin. On the international front, Cal is represented by Cal alumni Farida Osman for Egypt, Camille Cheng and Stephanie Au for Hong Kong, and Marina Garcia for Spain. Current Cal Bears representing non-USA countries include Ema Rajic for Croatia and Calympian Zhen Wen Quah for Singapore.

Day 1 of the competition on Sunday saw two California Golden Bears helping Team USA to a pair of relay medals. The big story is the performance of Nathan Adrian, just a little over half a year after his testicular cancer diagnosis and months after his successful (so far) treatment. 3x Calympian Nathan Adrian swam the winning anchor leg to help Team USA to a wire-to-wire win in the 4x100 Free Relay. Adrian teamed with Florida alum Caeleb Dressel and Indiana Alumni Blake Pieroni and Zach Apple for this USA victory.

For the Cal women, Abbey Weitzeil swam the 2nd leg to help the USA women to a Silver finish. Weitzeil teamed with a number of Cardinal(s) in Stanford alum Simone Manuel and Louisville alumni Mallory Comerford and Kelsi Dahlia for the Silver behind Australia.

Recent Cal alum Katie McLaughlin also raced in the 100 Fly but finished 9th in the semifinals to just missed out on the final. McLaughlin did set a new personal record though and remain a strong bet to make her first Olympic games next summer.

Day 2 action (this morning and still ongoing) sees both Calympians Ryan Murphy and Kathleen Baker earning a spot in their respective 100 Back finals later this week.

Cal fans can catch all the exciting actions this week between the NBC Sports Network, the Olympic Channel, and NBC.

Best of luck to all the Cal Bears this week!

GO BEARS!