🇺🇸 USA Trials 2025 – Day 5 of Santo Condorelli: the man who challenges fate

Let’s start from the end.

Let’s start from the last race: the men’s 50 freestyle A-final.

Yes, alright, the usual Jack Alexy won. The American giant once again asserted his dominance in sprint freestyle with a 21.36.

But that’s not what we’re here to talk about.

There’s a story to be told here — and truthfully, even a dozen pages wouldn’t be enough. Let’s try in a few lines.

This is the story of Santo, an American guy born in Japan to a U.S. father (of Italian descent) and a Canadian mother.Santo and his father, who had been following him poolside since his very first strokes, had a dream: winning the Olympics.Santo is an incredibly gifted swimmer.

He’s charismatic and magnetic outside the pool; kind and approachable away from the lanes, but fierce and impulsive when it counts. Even he’s not quite sure where his center lies.

It didn’t take long to spot his raw talent — even in his youth races, it was clear he was something else. One of those swimmers born once in 100,000. You can find some of his races on YouTube from his time at Bolles, even earlier. He won almost everything as a junior.

But the goal for Santo and Joseph, his father, remained the same: to win the Olympics.And the best way to do that was to go there. Fast.

So, at 17, in 2012, he chose to represent Canada — and did so until 2017.

He, Jo, and their middle finger became a symbol starting from the 2015 World Championships (well, long before that — but the world noticed here).

At those Worlds, 20-year-old Santo made it through the heats with a 48.77, then just barely scraped into the final in eighth with 48.49.But they weren’t there just to make the final.

They were there to win. Because if you have a lane, you have a chance.

And in the final? He blasted the start: 22.75 at the 50 — what would become his trademark.He touched fourth, barely missing the podium with 48.19 — just 7 hundredths away in a race he almost didn’t even get to swim. Damn those hundredths.

Especially bitter considering he had gone 47.98 leading off a relay at the Pan Ams just weeks earlier.

So how could he not put on an even bigger show at the Olympics a year later? Impossible.

Every time he dove in, he set a personal best. Santo was on fire, even if his Olympic build-up had been, let’s say… rocky. But conventional paths don’t exist in the Condorelli household. 21.83 in the 50 free. 51.60 in the 100 fly.

But it was the 100 freestyle where he wanted to shine.

Final of the 100 free. Fast first 50? No, blazing. 22.22.

Basically faster than his 50 best if you factor in it’s a feet-first split.

But he swam it beautifully, fluidly — pushing the 100 free into unknown territory.He touched fourth again — and the more you watch that race, the more impossible it feels that he didn’t win.Try it. Watch it. Rewind it 50 times. You’ll feel the same.

He dominated the first 75 meters. Made an Olympic final look like a regional meet where the local kid blasts the field.Poor turn, obvious fatigue at 75. But even when it looked over around the 85–90m mark, he kept swimming well, even on empty — and those chasing him never quite caught him in those last meters.

Fourth again. Three hundredths behind Olympic champ Nathan Adrian. Eight behind Belgium’s Timmers.

It looked like he had pulled the others through the race — Chalmers on his left (who won), and Timmers on his right (who took silver).

After Rio, Santo was 21. A brilliant present, a glowing future.

So what did he do?Simple: he quit.

Well, not entirely. He took a break. A long one. To figure out life outside the pool.

A choice nobody understood — except him.

Caeleb Dressel ( born in 1996) became the Dressel from 2016 (he was 6th in that 100 free final behind Santo) to his global explosion at Worlds 2017.

But Santo couldn’t stomach that fourth place.

So he walked away. Not for good — but he stepped back.

And from then on, Condorelli’s career became a rollercoaster. The back-and-forth would repeat often, but each time he returned to elite form. A one-of-a-kind trajectory — even Anthony Ervin’s doesn’t quite compare. Not Casually I mentioned " Ervin ".

There’s a reason he’s called Santo.

His time in Italy was both sweet and turbulent.

“La bella vita,” as he put it — maybe too many months adjusting. Still, he swam fast.

Fast on little training. Qualified for Worlds after a break.

Finished fourth in the relay with his teammates — another damn fourth.

That was when he decided to return to the U.S. to prep for his second Olympics.

After multiple coaching changes, he went back to his old coach, Sergio Lopez, and assistant Payton Brooks.

Training in Ostia. Qualified for the Olympics in the 100 fly at Sette Colli. Won silver in Tokyo with the relay.

“Boss, a 3:10.9 would fire me up going into the Olympics,” he told me the year before — not thinking it was possible.

We shook on it. In Korea it was 3:11.39 (he still owes me dinner for that one). In Tokyo: 3:10.29 in the morning — first seed. Unreal. In the final: 3:10.11. Second place, behind only Team USA.

But it was the first time we saw a dimmed Condorelli. His light wasn’t shining. His energy was gone.

He no longer felt the Italian mission as his own.

Time for a change.

He returned to the U.S.Joked on air: “Maybe next Olympics I’ll represent Japan. I’m the most international swimmer there is.” But no.

Santo and Joseph tried again. Different coaches. Different places. Too many to count — locations, coaches, philosophies.Seemingly contradictory paths — but all part of their vision. All with one goal in mind.

Things were going well — in his own unpredictable way. Well enough that making Team USA for Paris looked possible. But the inability to race at the 2024 Trials seemed to put an end to the dream.

Then in January 2025, Joseph Condorelli decided to watch over his son from above.

Santo wanted to try again. With his father closer than ever.

He specialized in the 50 — always his favorite, even if the world thought the 100 suited him better. But the world doesn’t know that Santo would regularly go sub-9 seconds (yes, you read that right) for 25s in training (reaction-time splits), putting half a body length on guys who regularly swim 21 in long course.

In competition that didn’t always translate in the 50. That’s where the world’s opinion came from — uninformed.

But Santo isn’t “the world.” Santo is Santo.And Santo + Joseph are stronger than anyone. Especially stronger than the world.

Trials 2025: 21.68.Personal best.

At 30 years old. Second place. Qualified for the World Championships in Singapore with Team USA — the toughest team to make on Earth.

“We did it,” he thinks, says, writes.

He and Joseph did it.

The Olympic gold dream is still there. Hanging in the air for a few more years.It won’t fade — no matter what — until that race is over.

But for now, they’ve made the U.S. National Team. Their national team.

“… now I’m almost at peace with myself.” And we’ll be here, rooting for you.Because it’s impossible not to love you.

For the other results from Day 5... https://www.omegatiming.com/2025/world-champs-team-trials-live-resultsI’ve written about what truly mattered to me.

Daniele