Olympic gold medalist Dana Vollmer, expecting her second child in July, was delighted to be racing Friday, even though she didn’t make it out of the heats of the 50m freestyle at the Mesa Pro Swim.
“Time didn’t matter, place didn’t matter. I’ve loved being here,” Vollmer told reporters after she clocked 27.59sec — the 55th fastest time in the preliminaries.
The race was Vollmer’s first since the 2016 Rio Games, where she took her Olympic medal haul to seven as she helped the United States win the 4x100m medley relay gold and also won a silver and a bronze.
Vollmer, 29, won individual gold in the 100m butterfly at London in 2012, then took time off to have her first son, Arlen. Now she’s aiming to compete at the Tokyo Games in 2020.
This time around, she opted to keep training, although with an altered program.
“We’ve mostly been doing strength training and keeping my feel for the water,” said Vollmer, adding that Friday’s race was the first time a 50m swim had felt long to her.
To accommodate her baby bump, Vollmer wore a regular Tyr racing suit — size 32 instead of the size 26 she wore in Rio.
“It feels fine,” she said. “It kind of holds everything in.”
