Sacramento’s next Olympian? Why swimmer Luca Urlando is favored to compete in Tokyo
Here’s a Luca you can mention in Sacramento without fans getting worked into an agitated and argumentative lather: Luca Urlando.
He’s a swimmer, an All-American sophomore-to-be for the Georgia Bulldogs by way of McClatchy High School with a global reputation for how fast he can zip through water. He is not to be confused with another Luka of global renown — Luka Doncic of the NBA, or the guy the Kings passed on in the 2018 draft.
Urlando is in Omaha, Nebraska, this week with the aim to touch the other end of the pool faster than anyone else and to secure a coveted spot on the USA Olympic Team to compete in the Tokyo Games later this summer. He has since 2019 posted the fastest American times in 200 butterfly and enters Omaha as the top seed. He won the event at the 2019 Junior World Championships after setting national-record times at McClatchy.
Urlando is a favorite to make the USA team also in the 200 freestyle relay. He is one of a handful of Americans who keep swimming in the fast lane even though this will be the first Olympic team since 1996 in which record-holder Michael Phelps is not part of the action. Phelps and Urlando are often mentioned in the same paragraph. In 2019, Urlando broke Phelps’ 17-18 national age-group time in the 200 fly. His 1 minute, 53.84 second time was the third fastest in the world.
Urlando even caught the attention of Phelps, the most decorated Olympian of them all with 23 gold medals, including eight at the 2008 Beijing Games.
“The kid has talent,” Phelps told the New York Times in 2019.
Phelps texted Urlando notes of congratulations during his prep days, a fan in the making. He even offered technical tips.
At 19, Urlando is now in the same breath as other Sacramento-area swimming greats who reached varying levels of Olympic fame over the decades, including Mike Burton, Jeff Float, Debbie Meyer, Sue Pedersen and Summer Sanders.
“I know what I’m capable of doing,” Urlando told reporters on the eve of the Trials. “I’m sure other people know, too, but coming into Trials, I am confident in my abilities to do what I need to get done. I wouldn’t say I have a target on my back.”
Championship pedigree
All of this from a young man who has overcome nagging shoulder injuries and hails from a family of weight-event track stars.
Urlando is the son of one-time Georgia Bulldogs All-American discus thrower Alessandro (Alex) Urlando, who became an Italian national champion. Urlando is the grandson of Giampaolo Urlando, a 10-time Italian national hammer champion. Giampaolo Urlando competed for Italy in the 1976, 1980 and 1984 Olympics. Paternal grandmother Maria Luisa Mion was a javelin thrower for the Italian national team.
All those throwers and here comes a swimmer? Urlando’s father often reminded his son that he would have made a fine javelin thrower because of how his arms whip through the water during the butterfly.
Urlando’s parents met while they were students at Georgia. The kid started swimming when he was 6 and began studying the Olympic Games by the time he was 10. His mother, Milissa, taught him how to swim. Milissa was once coached by Meyer, a 1968 gold medalist while still enrolled at Rio Americano High School. Melissa once competed on the same club team as 1992 Olympic champion Sanders, a Roseville High graduate.
At McClatchy, Urlando set Sac-Joaquin Section records in the 100 fly, the 100 backstroke and the 200 individual medley. As the nation’s No. 1 swimming recruit in 2019, Urlando set the public high school national record in the 100 fly in 45.88 seconds at the 2019 section meet.
After one of those meets, Urlando told The Sacramento Bee of his track lineage, “I’ve always been a swimmer. Track and field like my dad and grandfather? Maybe in a different lifetime.”
How hype has led to confidence
When he was 14, Urlando was with his Davis Aquadarts coach Billy Doughty watching the 2016 Olympic Trials on television. The plan was to make one of those teams. Doughty later said of his star pupil, “I’ve never seen anyone with his kick.”
By 2018, Urlando bettered Phelps’ national age-group mark in the 200 fly. He grew used to national fame and interviews from all over. He was as unflappable in those moments as he was in the water. In other words, he had a lot of Phelps in him, even though he’s much shorter at just under 6 feet tall.
“I try to think of myself as being cool under pressure and relaxed,” Urlando said before these trials. “I’m not a very antsy person. I love the hype that I was receiving and it fed into my swimming and it made me more confident.”
Urlando overcame a shoulder injury during the winter months of 2019 and 2020, and he benefited from the Olympic Games getting pushed back into this summer due to the pandemic.
He earned All-American status at Georgia as a freshman, winning the Southeastern Conference 200 fly. Urlando holds school records in the 200 fly, 200 free relay, 400 free relay, 800 free relay and the 200 medley relay, and he holds a number of junior national and world marks.
And at 19, he’s just getting warmed up.