AUSTIN, Texas — Those who know Chase Kalisz best figure the Olympic champion is going to have as much success in sales as he has had in international swimming, applying the affability and assuredness first seen during breaks with the North Baltimore Aquatic Club.
“I remember him finding shiny rocks and selling them to the other little kids at the pool,” said his mother, Cathy, of those days at Meadowbrook. “He’d go to the Whole Foods [on Smith Avenue], buy a bag of edamame, and sell what he called ‘magic beans.’ He’s always been a salesman.”
Kalisz used those powers of persuasion on himself after the Tokyo Olympics, where he became the second-oldest man to win the 400-meter individual medley.
The premier protege of Michael Phelps, Kalisz had vowed it would be his last foray in the sport’s most demanding test, so why is the 30-year-old in Indianapolis, where the U.S. Trials open Saturday, seeking a berth in the Paris Olympics?
“Ego,” Kalisz said.
There is more to it than that, as his preparation for Tokyo included a series of injuries and a COVID-disrupted schedule.
“There was so much stress and pressure involved in the last Olympic cycle,” he said. “It’s like all the weight’s been lifted off your shoulders. I’m enjoying swimming again, which is crazy. Everybody goes through their ‘love’ period in swimming, and then they go through their ‘hate’ period of swimming. They usually retire after that, but I’ve been around long enough to make it through. Now I’m enjoying everything. The process, everything.”
Phelps is long retired, but Kalisz still trains with the world’s best, and under Bob Bowman, his former NBAC coach who’s now based at the University of Texas. Kalisz isn’t favored to defend his gold medal, let alone win at the Trials on Sunday, but he’s in position to create Olympic history of his own.
Wonder boy
Kalisz was never supposed to be the best all-around swimmer in the world. He wasn’t even in his family’s plans, until his parents, Cathy and Mike, experienced the heartbreak of losing a baby girl, Chelsea, stillborn in March 1993.
“At the time,” Cathy Kalisz recalled, “I said, ‘The only thing that is going to get me through this is another pregnancy.’ "
That would be Chase, who arrived March 7, 1994, to parents who had relocated from their native Massachusetts to Harford County in 1985.
He’s 6 foot 4, with a stroke length and power that evince solid genes and chromosomes.
Cathy Kalisz was a cheerleader and dabbled in gymnastics. Mike Kalisz had the makings of a track and field decathlete, as he broke 2 minutes in the half-mile and cleared 6-7 in the high jump, before a knee injury derailed his basketball aspirations.
Mike Kalisz just retired from education, after 30 years as the athletic director at Hereford High. The Bulls won 58 state titles during his tenure, and swimming, in which all four of their children reached the Olympic Trials, was the last thing he expected them to pursue.
“Three of the four failed the Red Cross’ introduction to swimming,” Mike Kalisz said. “Chase would not put his face in the water, and his first coach took to dropping coins in the pool to make him go under.”
Courtney Kalisz reached the Trials as a 14-year-old. Chase followed her to practice, as did Connor and Cassidy. They moved from a fledgling swim club in Bel Air to the NBAC, but their routine was jolted in the winter of 2002-03, when Chase was literally knocked to his knees by Guillain-Barré syndrome.
Among other symptoms, the rare neurological disorder causes muscle weakness and paralysis. Kalisz spent a week in a medically induced coma and two weeks on a ventilator.
“There was a lot that I don’t remember,” he said. “There’s a lot of just laying in a hospital bed, not being able to move.”
Phelps was known for his rapid recovery between events. Kalisz was just as quick to rebound, as he halved the prescribed times in intensive care and a pediatric hospital.
Coming out of the coma, he told his parents, “I just want to get back into the water.”
Supergroups
It’s the first Tuesday in June, and Kalisz is piling up laps at the Eddie Reese Outdoor Pool, adjacent to the arena inside the Lee and Joe Jamail Texas Swimming Center.
Three months ago, he was maintaining his fitness and form in Tempe, Arizona, where Bowman went to coach in 2015. Days after guiding the Sun Devils to their first NCAA title, Bowman accepted the Longhorns job, succeeding the retiring Reese and sending a seismic jolt through the sport.
Multiple Olympic medal favorites followed Bowman from Tempe to Austin, most notably Leon Marchand, a 22-year-old Frenchman who last summer obliterated the longest-standing world record in the history of the sport. Phelps went 4:03.84 in the 400 IM at the 2008 Olympics. Marchand dipped to 4:02.50 at the 2023 world championships.
“This is probably the most medal production I’ve seen [at practice], but I’ve always trained in supergroups,” Kalisz said. “When I was a 14-year-old kid, I got thrown in the fire with the greatest Olympian of all time.”
That was in 2008, when Phelps and Bowman returned to Baltimore after an Olympic training cycle at the University of Michigan that produced eight gold medals.
Kalisz had played soccer, basketball and lacrosse, but his focus narrowed once he entered Fallston High School and began, he said, “shipping off to Meadowbrook for morning workouts before school.”
“It was pretty hard to not embrace that,” Kalisz said. “Who had it better than me as a kid? Getting to learn from the greatest of all Olympians, the mentality, the training, the philosophy of how to get through this.
“I ran into roadblocks early and was able to bust right through them because I had the guidance from Bob and Michael. It’s so valuable what I learned, at a really young age, to navigate my way.”
In 2012, Kalisz graduated from Fallston, made his Olympic Trials debut and headed to the University of Georgia, where coach Jack Bauerle was among Bowman’s closest colleagues.
Their collaboration helped Allison Schmitt win three gold medals at the 2012 Olympics and provided a template for Kalisz, who spent most of May at Bowman’s altitude camp in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
“My crazy ADHD mind is all over the place,” Kalisz said. “I always have to be on the move. I need changes of scenery. I need new and exciting things. It’s hard for me to stay stationary.”
Familiar waters
His younger sister, Cassidy, lives in Austin, and Kalisz has always had a soft spot for the capital city. At the 2014 NCAA championships here, Kalisz defended his 400 IM title and broke the American short-course record. A decade later, that performance remains on the banner displaying pool records.
Kalisz took a redshirt year to train with Phelps and Bowman at Arizona State before the 2016 Olympics, where he earned the silver medal. A year later, he won the world championship in 4:05.90, still his personal best, and also won the 200 IM.
“Nothing could go wrong in 2017,” Kalisz said. “I was so aerobically fit. Everything was easy. The amount of speed I had, it was crazy.”
He was in the best shape of his career, but the Olympics were still three years off, which turned into four with the pandemic.
Kalisz fought through injuries to get to Tokyo — an asterisk-laden Games officially known as the 2020 Olympics even though they were held in 2021 — where he won the gold medal in 4:09.42. He went faster each of the last two years, thanks to mileage that would crush others his age.
“He’s willing to do the work and knows he needs to do it,” Bowman said. “Because Chase is not a finesse swimmer, he has to have the engine. The only way to do that is go up and down that pool. He is willing to do that. As long as he can do that, he’ll be pretty good.”
‘Different animal’
Before he was on a first-name basis with Phelps, the face of swimming, Kalisz was getting fan mail from the American voice of the sport.
Keepsakes from that ordeal with Guillain-Barré — of which there have been no recurrences — include an autographed photo from Rowdy Gaines, the NBC analyst who was in his early 30s when he had his own bout with the syndrome.
“That’s pure Rowdy,” Kalisz said. “I was just some little kid who had the same disease that he had. I’ll always be appreciative of what he did for me.”
Their bond has grown, as Gaines has witnessed Kalisz’s uncommon longevity, which includes a streak of U.S teams at international meets second only to Katie Ledecky.
“It’s why I most admire Chase,” Gaines said. “Leon Marchand is not going to be swimming the 400 IM at age 30. As with Michael Phelps, there comes a point where it has to be taken out of the repertoire. It takes a completely different animal. For Chase to have that still be your best event at 30, that’s unheard of.”
Before Phelps, the world record was 4:11.76. Kalisz’s awareness of his body’s need and his craft have helped him go under 4:10 at least 17 times, including last summer, when a 4:08.22 got him a spot in the 2023 world championships. He finished fourth.
Phelps was 31 in 2016, when the last of his 23 gold medals included one in the 200 IM, the shorter version of the event that involves shifting gears from the butterfly to backstroke to breaststroke to freestyle.
Phelps won 400 IM gold in 2004 and 2008, but a wavering focus kept him off the medal podium in that event in 2012.
No man has ever medaled three times in the event. Kalisz could be the first.
Fans are back
The 2016 Olympics were the only Games since 1992 in which the U.S. did not produce the 400 IM champion, history that Kalisz referenced after his Tokyo gold.
“I do feel like I let the U.S. down in 2016, even though I swam faster there,” he said, of his silver in Rio de Janeiro. “The U.S. has a proud legacy [in the 400 IM]. This was my redemption story.”
It was an odd celebration, because pandemic precautions meant no spectators in Tokyo.
“When I walked out for my final, I didn’t really notice,” Kalisz said. “But afterward, being in the stands for other finals, you’re like, ‘Where is everybody?’ "
Kalisz’s father watched from home. His mom was among the American parents who took up NBC’s invitation to attend a viewing party in Orlando, Florida. This time, she’s headed to Indianapolis, mindful of the prohibitive cost of Paris and the fact this might be the last chance to see Chase compete in person.
She won’t be alone. The Trials will be held in a temporary pool at Lucas Oil Stadium, home to the Indianapolis NFL team, and the biggest crowds in swim history are anticipated.
“It will be nice to return to a normal situation,” said Kalisz, who is also in the mix in the 200 IM.
Swimming World magazine has Kalisz among the favorites to grab one of the two Olympic berths in the 400 IM behind Carson Foster, who was second to Marchand at each of the last two world championships. Three years ago, Foster led the Trials until being passed by Kalisz and Jay Litherland, the silver medalist in Tokyo.
“Because Chase is not a finesse swimmer, he has to have the engine. The only way to do that is go up and down that pool. He is willing to do that.”
Swimming coach Bob Bowman
Foster, Kalisz and Litherland all train in Austin.
Whoever comes out of the Trials will be in position to medal in Paris, albeit behind Marchand. His status is such that Bowman will be on the France coaching staff.
Those familiar with his swimmers, Kalisz said, know “we’re prepared for these types of situations.”
Kalisz earned a sports management degree at Georgia. He has endorsement deals with Delta Airlines, Eli Lilly and Nulo, a pet food company that’s featured Kalisz and Floyd, a bulldog and nod to the Georgia mascot.
Kalisz’s own appetite is whetted by one more U.S. Trials and the prospect of an Olympics in Paris.
“I feel like I’m 22. Bob will tell you I act like I’m 22,” Kalisz said. “I still wake up every single day wanting to be the best that I possibly can. That sense of self, and purpose, makes things a lot more enjoyable.”
An earlier version of this article gave the wrong name Kalisz’s dog. The Banner regrets the error.
Paul McMullen’s 40 years in Baltimore media included covering Michael Phelps for The Sun at the 2000 and 2004 Olympics. He retired to Austin, Texas, in 2021.
