Simone Manuel, Caeleb Dressel come back with Tyr Pro Series wins
Olympic gold medalists Simone Manuel and Caeleb Dressel notched their first Tyr Pro Swim Series wins of their respective comebacks on Thursday night.
Manuel took the 200m freestyle by one hundredth of a second in 1:57.80 in Westmont, Illinois. The field included 2023 U.S. champion Claire Weinstein, who placed third.
Manuel, a 27-year-old who shared 2016 Olympic 100m free gold, earned her first top-level win since the Tokyo Olympic Trials.
She took five months off from swimming after the Tokyo Games while recovering from overtraining syndrome, then moved from Stanford to Arizona State.
MORE: Full Results
Manuel ranks eighth in the nation in the 200m free since the start of 2023 by best time. Up to the top eight at June's Olympic Trials will make the team for the 4x200m free relay in Paris.
Simone Manuel details long road back from swimming break
Simone Manuel, the fastest female American swimmer in history, stopped after the Tokyo Olympics.
Later Thursday, Dressel swam his fastest 100m butterfly since his return from a months-long swimming break last year, earning his first Pro Series victory in nearly two years in his first race since becoming a dad on Feb. 17.
Dressel clocked 51.27, prevailing by a half-second over Dare Rose, the 2023 World bronze medalist and fastest American in the event since the start of last year.
Dressel remains the fifth-fastest American since the start of 2023. The top two at June's trials make the Olympic team.
Dressel, 27, won the Tokyo Olympic 100m fly in 50.45, a world record, among his five total gold medals from those Games.
In June 2022, he withdrew during the world championships on unspecified medical grounds, took at least two months off from swimming (except to do so with manatees), returned to training in Gainesville that winter and worked his way up to a full practice load by May 2023.
“The easiest way to put it: my body kept score,” he said last July 1, explaining why he took a break. “There’s a lot of things I shoved down and all came boiling up, so I didn’t really have a choice. I used to pride myself on being able to shove things down and push it aside and plow through it. It worked for a very long time in my career ... until I couldn’t do that anymore.”
The Westmont meet continues Friday with finals live on Peacock at 7 p.m. ET.
