18-year-old Luke Whitlock traveled just approximately thirty minutes from his hometown of Carmel to Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis to compete in this year’s US Olympic trials in swimming.
The University of Florida commit was successful in posting a record breaking time in the men’s 400 freestyle, previously set by Olympic medalist, Michael Phelps, almost two decades ago.
His freestyle time of 3:46.26 beat out the 3:46.73 time set by Phelps in 2003 for the 17-18 year old age group.
Amongst his competitor’s in this year’s trials, 17 of them have Indiana ties.
Just two days into the competition five of them had already punched their ticket to the 2024 Olympic games in Paris, France.
Fellow Carmel swimmer Drew Kibler became a two time Olympian after finishing third in the men’s 200 meter freestyle.
The Shackell siblings, Alex and Aaron, Lilly King and Blake Pieroni are the other four to qualify for this year’s Olympic games.
“We’re a swimming state. And we’re really, really proud of that,” King told NBC’s Elizabeth Beisel.
This year’s Olympic competitors tied the record number set in 2021 and Indiana was only second to California who had seven native competitors.
Although the final roster won’t be set until the trials conclude Sunday, the top six in both the 100 and 200 freestyles qualify for Paris.
Indianapolis last hosted the trials back in 2000 and has already set the largest attendance record ever in the history of the trials seeing 22,209 spectators Wednesday.
The trials continue through Sunday, June 23rd.