It’s not like Olympic swimmer Caeleb Dressel came out of nowhere when he won five of his seven gold medals in Tokyo last year. He had already picked up two (the 4×100 free and 4×100 medley) at the 2016 Rio games, and had been blazing a path to Japan by earning seven at the 2017 World Aquatics Championships in Budapest – and a record eight medals, including six gold, two years later at the same competition in Gwangju, South Korea.
And then came the pandemic, the Olympic postponement, and
