Despite Losing a ‘Finals’ Spot, Shaine Casas Makes His Parents Proud With a New Record at US Open Swimming Championship

The US OPEN Swimming Championship has already seen several ups and downs from day one. Caeleb Dressel’s much-valued return might come as the table topper in the list of ups. Chase Kalisz’s last lap stunner might not go missed. However, among those greats, 23-year-old, Shaine Casas didn’t shy away from proving his presence. 

Since coming into the swimming world, Shaine Casas has given some spellbound performances, but that fell inconsistently. His first Olympic trial also added to that. But some of his timings in the US Open Swimming this year proved otherwise. 

Shaine Casas’ ‘incredible’ performance 

Last Thursday night, the US Open Swimming arena Shaine Casas rose to the moment. The University of Texas trained swimmer gave his best outing in the B-final. Eventually, he broke the tournament record in the 200 IM set by Olympic medalist Chase Kalisz in 2022. Shaine Casas made the event quite a show with his appalling swimming prowess. Even the CEO of Swimming Twitter, Kyle Sockwell, couldn’t hide his awe at the timing of the 2022 FINA Swimming World Champion’s timing in the four laps of the event. He took to X to post his disbelief as the caption, “SHAINE CASAS. WHAT. ON EARTH.”

Earlier in the day, Casas missed the A-final as the 9th seed in prelims (2:01.47). His outing to clock 1:56.06 came after consistent timing on each of the legs. Especially, his butterfly leadoff and breaststroke leg felt a whisker to even Kyle Sockwell.

Based on that, the Swimming Twitter CEO claimed, “Shaine’s race strategy was without question “sprint until I get too tired to sprint anymore” and it looks like that should be the strategy going forward. This dude could break the WR in the 200 IM.”  Casas has found similar support from one of the closest members of his family as well. 

Shaine’s mother believes in him 

Shaine’s mother, Monica Epling, has been believing in Shaine’s inherent connection with water for a long time. In an interview with RVG Sports, she claimed, “He doesn’t believe me when I tell him he was geared toward swimming,…He’s been around water since before he was born.” However, the water connection didn’t pan out on a high note for Shaine Casas’ family as his father, James Epling died by drowning. 

Read more: US Swimmers to Keep an Eye Out at the 2023 World Swimming Championships

Therefore, Shaine’s mother took every precaution before sending her son, Shaine to his high school. So moments like the one at the US Open Swimming Championship would come as a pride to his mother and his departed father. Now Shaine might go for a better attempt at the records set by Ryan Lochte in the 200m breaststroke and 200m IM which he missed by an inch. 

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