Fargo’s Anderson Accepting Challenge of Wave Two Olympic Swimming Trials

Wave Two in 50 Freestyle races on June 19th

FARGO, N.D. — Fargo’s Eric Anderson continues to elevate his performance on the biggest of stages. Racing in wave one of the Olympic Trials on Monday in Omaha, the Shanley alum is going to see another week of competition as he tries to qualify for the Tokyo team.

How did it happen? A second place finish in the 50 meter freestyle with a time of 22.71. 14 seconds better than the standard. It was just two seconds off the first place swimmer. The mark put him in a tie for 18th all time in that event for the 17-18 age group.

What was already a difficult task becomes even more difficult in wave two. Anderson is one of only 50 swimmers left where 30  of them  are Olympians and 23 of them are previous medalists.

“To have the expectation we were moving on to wave two wouldn’t have been the right attitude. It wouldn’t have been respectful. He needed to go there and have great swims. He did that,” his coach Pat Anderson said. “Now that he’s moving on to wave two, it gets a lot harder and not from the standpoint of swimming. He just needs to do that the way that he has but he dealt with the distraction of wave one very well. Wave two the distractions become a lot more difficult. He’s going to be swimming against the american record holder Caleb Dressell. Which Caleb is the fastest in the world. He’s an Olympian. A gold medalist. There’s going to be people who raised their expectations and looking for him to do something which is crazy because he already did something but has a legitimate shot at making the team.”

The second wave prelims and final are next Saturday in Omaha. Prelims will be on NBC in the morning with the final on the Olympic channel at night.