Michael Brinegar played basketball, soccer and baseball growing up, but gave them up at age 12 to focus on swimming.
While it’s difficult to determine how good Brinegar would have become in the other three sports, it’s safe to say he made the right decision by sticking with swimming. The Columbus resident and Indiana University redshirt sophomore is headed to his first Olympics.
The 21-year-old Brinegar has qualified for this summer’s Tokyo Games with runner-up finishes in both the 800- and 1,500-meter freestyle events at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials in Omaha, Nebraska. He joins his mother Jennifer, who swam for the U.S. in the 1976 Games in Montreal, as an Olympian.
Jennifer and Michael followed much the same path to get to the Olympics. Michael grew up in Columbus and swam for Columbus North as a freshman and trained by himself his sophomore year. He spent his final two years of high school in Mission Viejo, California, training with coach Mark Schubert. Jennifer, a Bloomington native, also trained under Schubert in Mission Viejo when she was in high school, before returning home to swim at IU.
“It’s been really great training under him,” Michael said. “If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be where I’m at today in swimming. It’s been really crucial. I train really well under him. He brings the best out in me in workouts and in meets. It’s been really important being able to have that.”
Michael, who has been swimming since age 5, has returned to Mission Viejo in the summers since he’s been at IU and even spent the entire 2019-20 school year there training for the 2020 Olympics. Those games were postponed until this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
While most pools were shut down during the pandemic, Schubert had pool access for all but two weeks last year.
“My agreement with coach Schubert when Michael decided to come here would be that he could go home and swim at Mission in the summer, so this is nothing out of the ordinary,” IU coach Ray Looze said. “He even redshirted and stayed in Mission not this year, but the 2020 year, so this is all what we had planned, and it’s worked out beautifully. Honestly, without that extra pool time, being a distance kid, I don’t know if he’s on the Olympic team. It was really a huge advantage for him, and it paid off.”
Michael narrowly missed qualifying for the Olympics in the Open Water 10K event, which had its qualifier in 2019. After that, he and Schubert and Looze channeled the 6-foot-4 Michael’s training to suit him for the much-shorter 800 and 1,500 freestyle races.
“In the collegiate season, we really worked on Michael Brinegar’s speed and technique, and when I watched him swim in Omaha, that’s the best his stroke has looked,” Looze said. “So I think the collegiate season really played a big role in setting him up for his success. His club coach, Mark Schubert, really commented on that, that it’s the most his technique has improved. It’s a team effort on him for sure.”
That speed paid off in a big way for Michael, especially in the 800 freestyle. He used a huge finishing kick to move from third place into the second-and-final qualifying spot in the final 50 meters at the Trials.
“I always try to finish as fast as I can,” he said. “Just everything I have left, I have to go. I’ve been doing that ever since I started swimming.”
Making the Olympic team in the 800 freestyle took all the pressure off Michael for the 1,500 freestyle, which had its final on the last night of the Trials.
“It honestly probably took a little too much off,” he said. “I didn’t have any nerves really before the (1,500) because I had already qualified. I didn’t refocus enough for the (1,500), I don’t think.”
Following the Trials, Michael went back to Mission Viejo to resume training with Schubert and the Mission Viejo Nadadores club team to train for a week. He leaves today for U.S. Training Camp I in Honolulu, which lasts until July 12.
U.S. Training Camp II will be July 13-19 in Tokyo. The athletes move into Olympic Village on July 21.
Michael is notorious for being able to produce “negative splits” in his races, which means the second half is faster than the first half.
“I’m really just focusing more my speed so I can take out both the 800 and the (1,500) a little bit faster and still not get to tired from it,” he said. “Then, I’m working on my negative splits so I can come back just as fast or faster.”
Michael will swim in the heats of the 800 freestyle between 5 and 9:30 p.m. Tokyo time on July 27 (4-8:30 a.m. EST). If he makes it, the final will be between 10:30 a.m. and 1:10 p.m. Tokyo time on July 29 (9:30 p.m.-12:10 a.m. EST July 28).
The 1,500 freestyle heats are between 5 and 9:30 p.m. Tokyo time on July 30 (4-8:30 a.m. EST). The 1,500 final will be between 10:30 a.m. and 12:25 p.m. Tokyo time on Aug. 1 (9:30-11:25 p.m. EST July 31).
The ultimate goal for Michael would be to bring home a medal.
“Michael is going to have to drop a lot of time, which I do believe he’s capable of, to get himself into the top eight and in medal contention,” Looze said.
