Weinstein to Swim this Summer for Team USA

Last month, when 17-year-old Claire Weinstein of White Plains, N.Y., secured her place on Team USA’s swim team for the upcoming Summer Olympics in Paris by completing the 200-meter freestyle in a tidy 1:56.18, it felt like the most daunting obstacle was now in her past.

Not because she was merely content to represent the U.S. in The City of Light in her first Olympics, irrespective of the actual results. But because no competition – even the Olympics – could match the high-octane U.S. Olympic swimming trials held over nine days in Indiana (aired on NBC during prime-time hours), with the final two events in front of record-setting crowds at Lucas Oil Stadium as the home of the NFL’s Indianapolis Colts was metamorphosed into an enormous swimming pool.

All told, nearly 300,000 fans flocked through the turnstiles in just over a week to watch America’s elite swimmers realize their dreams. It was an unprecedented following for a swim event, but apparently Weinstein wasn’t particularly phased by the limelight as her second place 1:56.18 mark was not even a tick behind that of four-time Olympian Katie Ledecky (1:55.22), who will once again be the face of USA Swimming at this year’s Summer Games.

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For Weinstein, what was perhaps even more impressive, was that her day got off to a rocky start as she stumbled to a 30th place finish in the 400-freestyle before rebounding in her signature 200-meter freestyle event to post her second fastest time ever (her career personal record in the 200-meter freestyle was a 1:55.26 mark, which actually edged Ledecky in last year’s U.S. International Team Trials).

Weinstein, who was a world champion as a part of the U.S.’ winning 800 free relay at the 2022 World Championships, will be competing in the 200-meter freestyle and 800-meter freestyle relay when the Olympic swimming events kick off July 27.

“I think she will handle it [Olympics] really, really well,” said Ron Aitken, who as coach of the Sandpipers of Nevada, has shepherded Weinstein along since autumn 2021. “She’s been to two world championships. One went really well for her, and the other one didn’t. Her Olympic trials were super stressful, and I don’t think it can get any more stressful than what she’s already gone through. I think she’s going to be able to enjoy the whole process. I think she will race really well because the biggest burden that she had was making the Olympic team and becoming an Olympian. Now that she’s an Olympian, she just gets to go out there and race and show everybody how good she can be.”

Weinstein, along with Team USA heavyweights Caeleb Dressel, Simone Manuel, and Ledecky, hope to make a splash later this month in France. But the pressure on the States to bring home gold is not as intense as it is for other countries, namely Australia, which is expected to build off its brilliant performance at the Tokyo Games earlier this decade.

“Team USA is the underdog,” acknowledged Aitken when speaking to the Atlanta Jewish Times earlier this month. “I think it’s a great position for Team USA to be in because they’ve always been the favorite in swimming. When America has something to chase, we usually do pretty well. It’s great to have to go after somebody instead of them coming after us. I can’t predict that the U.S. will come out on top, but they’ll be pretty damn tough.”

Likewise, Weinstein, through sheer dogged determination, ascended the ranks of USA swimming this decade. The now-teenage prodigy began swimming independently at the age of three; a few years later, she was racing in competitions for the Westchester Aquatics Club. It soon became obvious to everyone, including her Westchester coach Carle Fierro, that Weinstein flashed potential to deliver on the national stage. Thus, her decision to head westward to join the powerhouse Nevada Sandpipers club, coached by Aitken and stacked with Olympians.

Team USA is the underdog … I think it’s a great position for Team USA to be in because they’ve always been the favorite in swimming. When America has something to chase, we usually do pretty well. It’s great to have to go after somebody instead of them coming after us. I can’t predict that the U.S. will come out on top, but they’ll be pretty damn tough.

“When she first got here, I didn’t think she was ready to be coached by me yet,” Aitken continued. “I gave her a three-week trial to see how it goes. Every day, she came in and proved to me that she was ready to make the changes and work as hard as she could and be able to adapt to a different style of training. Every day, she has come in and gotten better ever since. She has struggled every now and then, but overall, she’s a very committed athlete. She has a goal and an end game, and she works for it every single time.”

Aitken estimates that under his tutelage, Weinstein, who as a 13-year-old in February 2021 became one of the youngest swimmers to qualify for the 2021 U.S. Olympic Trials and a year later finished tenth in the 200 freestyle at the 2022 World Championships, has been swimming three times more than she was back home in Westchester. Sometimes, doing laps for hours on end is less taxing than the backbreaking strength and conditioning workouts on land. Such is the life of a competitive swimmer.

“Every day was hard,” he added. “She [Weinstein] would have days that were super hard. She had to have the mental toughness to come in and deal with that every single day. I think when people aren’t used to that, it gets hard, and they tend to give up or quit … I said as long as you don’t give up and as long as you keep coming to practice when you don’t feel like coming to practice, then we’ll be able to do this.”

Weinstein, who is committed to swimming at the University of California-Berkeley, starting in 2025, never gave up, even when the taxing workouts put her body through the ringer day after day … and even as the Israel-Hamas war has weighed on her mind for the past nine-plus months.

“She loves her Jewish community as well,” her coach added. “She’s very passionate about it. With things going on overseas, she’s very conscious of what’s going on. She doesn’t like what’s happening and it affects her emotionally. You can tell how she’s passionate about that stuff and if she could do anything about it, she would.”