Breeja Larson is something of an unknown at the Olympic Swimming Trials taking place in Omaha, but that hasn’t stopped her from making a huge impact on the shape of the team. In fact, it’s safe to say Breeja Larson has taken the swimming trials by storm with her spectacular upset of World Champion Rebecca Soni in the women’s 100 meter breast stroke finals.
As you can see by the lead image, Larson’s win even surprised her.
Unfortunately, NBC is holding on to the highlights of Larson’s impressive win like they are made out of gold. They do, however, have video of the upset on their NBCOlympics.com site, which you can see here. Bonus: YouTube provides the video platform (a major television study can’t handle the bandwidth, apparently) but the videos are non-embeddable. In their article, NBC calls Larson something of an unknown, something NBC perpetuates, what with their lack of a “Meet the Athlete” page for Larson.
In fact, when you search Larson’s name at NBCOlympics.com, you get a “There are no results for your search. Please try another selection,” something I’m sure that will be remedied before the day is out. With that in mind, here’s a screenshot capturing NBC’s unfortunate lack of acknowledgement for Larson:
Fortunately, ESPN is here to fill in some of the blanks about the up-and-coming 20-year old star from Texas A&M:
Larson didn’t begin competitive swimming until three years ago. It was her first Olympic trials. She was seeded sixth in the event, behind the likes of Soni, world record-holder Jessica Hardy and two-time Olympic silver medalist Amanda Beard. Yet, at the end of the night, she was the one standing on top. When her hand touched the wall and she looked up at the scoreboard, a twisted mix of shock, amazement and genuine delight overcame her. And minutes later, she was thinking about, what else — finally getting to extend that hand and say hello.
“I see them walking by and I want to introduce myself,” she said. “Now I get to meet ’em and I’m really excited.”
Larson was the first swimmer from A&M to win at trials and the second Aggie to make the team.
Considering the fact that Larson is the 2012 NCAA Champion in the breaststroke, perhaps NBC should’ve seen her coming a little bit better than what they did:
As for Larson, she’s incredibly happy to be London-bound: