USA TODAY Sports
RIO DE JANEIRO — Coming off an U.S. Olympic trials where times were down across the board, the American swim team was encouraged by its performance during the preliminaries on Saturday, mostly because everybody who got in the pool was faster.
“I’ve never been that fast for prelims, never been that good in the first race of a meet,” said Maya DiRado, who qualified third for the 400-meter individual medley in a time of 4 minutes, 33.50 seconds. “I was watching people crush it all morning, so I was glad to carry that on.