Caeleb Dressel took Tokyo 2020 by storm, bringing home five gold medals from the pandemic-delayed Summer Games. However, his journey to gold was not always sunshine and rainbows.
The 25-year-old and his inner circle opened up about the dark times throughout the rise of his career on In Depth With Graham Bensinger. With the absence of Michael Phelps, the focus was largely on Dressel, placing sky-high expectations for him to replace one of the greatest swimmers of all time.
“You go to Trials and there’s a building that is—the whole wall is Caeleb. And it’s like, ‘Oh, no pressure here, Caeleb,’” his mother Christina said. “I think it wouldn’t be as dominant as it was if Phelps was still kind of on the platform. But because there’s no Phelps, it literally gets dumped on him.”
