As the starter’s finger inches closer to the trigger for the 2020 U.S Olympic trial’s 400-meter individual medley (IM) final, 19-year-old Sycamore High School graduate Carson Foster coils back on his block, looming over lane four. His older brother and college teammate Jake Foster is in the same position in lane two.
The starter emits a beep and the Fosters, along with the race’s six other participants cut into the water.
Carson, the youngest Foster, gets off to a breakneck pace in the butterfly portion of the race. After the first 100 meters, he is ahead of second place by three quarters of a second. After the next 100, with the race half over, Carson is ahead by more than two seconds.
An early lead turns to missing out for Carson Foster
But in the next 50 meters, Foster’s lead dwindles to just over a second-and-a-half. By the time the next 50 is finished, Chase Kalisz, who went on to win gold in Tokyo for the same event, overtook him.
Fifty yards later, when the swimmers made their final turn, Foster cut back into Kalisz’s lead, and wascomfortably in second place (the top two finishers make the Olympics), more than a second-and-a-half ahead of the third-place swimmer Jay Litherland.
Then, about halfway through the race’s final leg, Carson Foster’’s back’s momentum slowed. In the first leg of the race, it looked like he had a motor strapped to his rear end. At the end of the last leg, he seems to be swimming through honey.
Kalisz pulled further away and Litherland, who went on to win silver in Tokyo for the same event, kicks into high gear, and crashes into the touchpad a half-second ahead of Foster.
For the first 390 meters or so of the race, Foster was in the Olympics. The last ten set his lifelong dream of being an Olympian back at least three years. In the same trials, Carson missed the Olympic cut in the 200-meter freestyle by one spot and in the 200-meter IM by just 0.18 seconds.
“At 19 it’s really tough for a kid to take criticism and be self-aware enough to know where he needs to get better,” said Jim Foster, Carson’s dad. “But that’s what Carson did. He worked with performance coaches on the mental side of his craft, and here we are today.”
About a month later, on the night before the swimming competition opened at the Tokyo Olympics, Foster was instead swimming in a regional meet, the Southern Sectionals in Austin, Texas. There, he tore through the 400 IM in 4:08:46. That time would have won him the Olympic Trial event a month before and a spot in the Tokyo Games. As he would find out later, it would have also won him the Olympic gold by more than a second.
Foster and his two older siblings all swam at the collegiate level. When Carson was born, the Fosters lived in Arizona in a home with a pool. According to Jim Foster, he and his wife began teaching the kids water safety at a very young age. Foster’s sister Hannah is two years older than him. The Fosters figured when they were teaching Hannah, they might as well get their youngest kid started too.
Carson swam in his first competitive meet at just six years old. Shortly after that, he started requesting that his dad film each race. Young Carson was a film-junkie.
Carson Foster’s path to Olympic qualifying
Ken Heis is the coach of the Mason Manta Rays, Carson’s youth swim club.
“When all the Foster kids showed up, it was easy to see they were fast,” Heis said. “But when I saw their work ethic, their love for the sport, I knew they were a little different. Years ago, he’d come in hours before meets he wasn’t old enough to compete in started. He’d put in a hard practice session before watching his brother and sister.”
At 10, he broke Michael Phelps’ age-group record in the 100-meter butterfly, his first touch with fame. He and his siblings all swam in their first Olympic trials at the same time, when Carson was just 14.
Becoming an Olympic swimmer isn’t easy. Carson trains six days a week year-round – if he’s lucky he gets about a three-week break in the dog days of summer. Some days, he swims up to three hours a day with dry-land workouts on top of that.
Many have heard of Phelps’ legendary 10,000 calorie-per-day diet. Jim Foster says that when all three kids were in high school, the family’s grocery bill was “off the charts.”
In his grocery-buying prime, Foster says, he was buying about four cartons of eggs per week. He knew the schedule of the delivery truck at the local United Dairy Farmers, and on delivery days he’d head down the street and clean the place out of chocolate milk.
Even while living the arduous schedule of a world-class swimmer, Foster makes time for others.
“It couldn’t happen to a better guy,” Heis said. “He is encouraging of others. He helps out with our younger swimmers without being asked whenever he’s back in town. He makes working hard a cool thing to do.”
Carson Foster rewrote his Olympic qualifying story
Now, on to 2024. This iteration of the 400 IM Olympic trial final looked remarkably similar. Carson Foster was in lane four. Litherland and Kalisz once again flanked him in lanes three and five. This time, Foster, wore a black Manta Rays swim cap and was a man on a mission.
He got off the gates hot again, but didn’t relinquish his lead for a moment. Kalisz again cut into it going into the final quarter of the race, from nearly two seconds to about a half of one. This time though, Foster turned it on through the last 100 meters and won by nearly two seconds to punch his ticket to Paris.
“It’s been a lifelong dream of his to represent the United States and Cincinnati at the Olympics,” his dad said. “It’s an incredibly proud moment for him and everyone who knows him.”
Later this week, Foster also will compete for an Olympic spot in the 200-meter backstroke (final Thursday, June 20 starting at 8 p.m.) and the 200-meter IM (final Friday, June 21, starting at 8 p.m.). You can watch on NBC.
Just a couple weeks after the Olympics, Carson will return to Cincinnati to marry his high school sweetheart and former Manta Rays teammate Meredith Wolf.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Carson Foster journey to 2024 Paris Summer Olympics
