May 1, 2025
The Feel-Good-Comeback-Story of NCAA All-American Owen Lloyd, EP 277
A disqualification that turns into one of swimming's most viral moments. A champion brought to his knees in tears as officials strip away his victory. And a redemption exactly one year later that proves sometimes, the universe does give second chances.
NC State NCAA All-American and ACC Champion in the mile (1650), Owen Lloyd's journey from heartbreak to triumph embodies everything we love about sports comebacks. After winning the mile at the ACC Championships during his senior year, Owen experienced the crushing disappointment of being disqualified for inadvertently falling into a competitor's lane during celebration. The moment – captured on camera just as he was about to be interviewed as champion – amassed over a million views online and sparked outrage throughout the swimming community.
Rather than let this devastating moment define him, Owen returned for a fifth year with renewed determination. He meticulously developed mental techniques to maintain focus during his grueling event, including playing specific songs in his head throughout different phases of the race. His disciplined approach to training included benchmark test sets that built unshakable confidence, even when facing Olympic-level competition.
The story reaches its perfect conclusion when Owen returns to ACCs one year later, executing a flawless strategic race to reclaim his rightful title with the best time of his career. As he touched the wall in victory, the basketball phrase "ball don't lie" said everything that needed saying. His improvement from a 15:24 freshman to a 14:29 fifth-year stands as testament to what's possible when defeat becomes fuel rather than a final chapter.
Whether you're a swimmer or simply someone who appreciates inspiring comebacks against the odds, Owen's story reminds us that our greatest setbacks often precede our greatest triumphs. Listen now and discover how the discipline of distance swimming creates not just champions in the pool, but individuals equipped to overcome life's most challenging moments.
• NC State All-American and ACC Champion in the mile (1650)
• Improved from 15:24 as a freshman to 14:29 in his fifth year
• Masters Student focusing on coaching, leadership and psychology
• Recently retired from competitive swimming at 2023 NCAAs
• Uses carefully selected music in his head to maintain focus during races
• Created a strict 3-hour pre-race routine for the mile
• Endured a heartbreaking disqualification after winning ACCs
• Returned one year later to win the event legitimately against stronger competition
• Planning to pursue coaching at the collegiate level
• Values "pressure is a privilege" as his guiding philosophy
Email us at HELLO@ChampionsMojo.com. Opinions discussed are not medical advice, please seek a medical professional for your own health concerns.
00:00 - Owen Lloyd's Swimming Journey
05:40 - The Mental Game of Distance Swimming
09:30 - The Devastating Disqualification Story
16:12 - The Comeback Strategy and Mindset
25:10 - Race Day and Redemption Victory
30:25 - Life After Swimming and Future in Coaching
36:00 - Lessons Learned and Final Thoughts
WEBVTT
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Hello friends, I'm Kelly Pallas.
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Welcome to the Champions Mojo podcast and today, if you are looking for a feel good comeback story, you are in the right place.
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This is really one of my favorite comeback stories.
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It happens in the swimming community and it is phenomenal.
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The actual video that caught the start of this comeback story has had over a million views on YouTube and we are going to talk with the man who made this great comeback today, and that is Owen Lloyd.
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He is an NC State, ncaa All-American ACC champion in the 1650.
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Owen has a big resume.
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He's now graduated and is retired from swimming, but he's with us today and we are so excited.
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Owen Lloyd, welcome to Champions Mojo.
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Thank you for having me on.
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Yeah, so tell us just real quick where you are in your schooling and your training and kind of where what is.
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What is Owen up to right now?
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Yeah, so I just completed my fifth year of eligibility at NC State.
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I'm currently in a master's program.
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It's two years, master's of arts, liberal studies.
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So I kind of get to choose what my focus is, and right now that's coaching, leadership and psychology.
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I actually just retired at NCAAs in March, so been enjoying not waking up as early, going to practice that kind of stuff, but kind of already getting into more things.
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I actually went on a run today.
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Did not feel great at all, but that's how it goes and that learning curve.
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But yeah, just finished up my swimming career.
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I had a really good post-season.
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How far did you run?
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today I just did two miles, two and a half miles.
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Yeah, just so.
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Probably would have been easier on you if you'd swum that right 100%.
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Yeah, I always my right 100%.
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My Achilles and shins were not.
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We're not having it after all the basketball and stuff I did this weekend.
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So as a master swimming podcast and more for adults.
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I always try to encourage the younger swimmers that are on the show and we've had a lot of Olympians, a lot of people in your age group, to just say, yeah, you're going to retire from that high level of swimming, but would you ever consider continuing your swimming through masters, maybe later?
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Oh yeah, 100%.
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I think I just wanted to break mentally from, obviously, that high level competitive aspect of college swimming.
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But I'm extremely open to doing triathlons in the future and potentially massive swimming, and as I want to be a coach, I'll be around the pool.
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It's a wonderful form of exercise.
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I know that so, and I I'm sure I'll get the the yearn for the water back, but as of now, it's not hitting me three or four weeks out.
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Right, right.
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I always wish that people would say they're taking a pause versus retiring, but I get it.
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I totally get that that high level, especially being a distance swimmer.
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So one of the things that I know we would love to hear from you and I say we because we have a lot of people listening what, what is that hardest part of grinding through distance for you, like, like all the training or the pain, or what, what is it that kind of makes that being a distance swimmer?
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What does that mean to you?
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That's a loaded question.
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I think the biggest thing is just almost the, the grind, as you call it.
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Not necessarily monotony, because there are ways to make it interesting and that's something that I really leaned into the last two years, but just the, the constant, constant yardage, the early mornings doing more than everyone else around you.
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Obviously, like every distance swimmer is envious of the people who are able to sprint, but those are not the gifts that I was given and, yeah, I mean, as I've gotten older like obviously almost two decades in the sport you're, you're gonna have stuff with your shoulders and having to rehab that and just constantly thinking about ways to mitigate that stress, recover correctly.
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It's just a lot that goes into it and I'm someone who, if I'm committing to something like I, want to be all in on it.
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So that disciplinary aspect of not cutting corners in practice also has, or did this year especially, kind of bleed over into the rest of my life.
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So, yeah, I think biggest thing about being a distance swimmer is the discipline to stay motivated, locked in, not just in practice but just out of it as well, and it'll, it'll translate to success that way but just out of it as well and it'll, it'll translate to success that way.
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Yeah, almost a little bit more more likely, like it's.
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It's?
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You kind of know if you've held 15, 100s on a minute and you held your pace for the mile, you kind of know that's coming versus somebody who's got to drop a second, a hundred to to final or something.
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So so owen you your trajectory of your swimming.
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You, you came in as a freshman.
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You, if I'm recalling from reviewing your, your history there, you you kind of had this build into your senior year where I think your freshman year you didn't make NCAAs, and then you get a little bit better, and then you final, and then you win ACC's and then you your top five at NCAAs.
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What, what do you think was your?
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What do you think made that possible?
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Cause a lot of people go the opposite way.
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Yeah, there's a lot of factors that went into it, for sure.
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And, like you said, I was like 15, 24 or something coming into college.
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I just got a spot on the team, no scholarship money and I was surrounded by a really good group, obviously led by Mark Bertavino, but I was one of, if not the slowest guys in that group freshman year.
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So it was kind of if not the slowest guys in that group freshman year.
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So it was kind of just surviving that year.
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But after making wave one trials that was good I made it back to wave two.
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That kind of gave me a lot of confidence.
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And then at the start of my sophomore year I was like, okay, I need to like make these changes because my freshman year didn't go as well and there were challenges with COVID.
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But my sophomore year I really committed to kind of locking in and I knew that if I wanted to even just have lanes at dual meets I would have to really prove it in practice and race all of those guys who were faster than me, like Ross and Eric Knowles, and I kind of just built on that mindset as I got older and obviously they graduated so I had to be that person that the team could rely on be the next man up and we had people like Will Gallant still there and he was amazing, and then the younger guys like Lance always pushing me.
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So I attribute a lot of my continued success to my environment of teammates that were around me and a coach that was able to push me a lot and I kind of just built off that momentum.
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My junior year or my sophomore year I qualified for NC's but I wasn't able to go because of the roster limits so we had a diver qualify and he went instead of me but I got to go to the meet, experience the pressure, which is an awesome experience.
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And junior year I got mono and but I bounced back from that and that gave me a lot of confidence going into that summer where I qualified for an international team.
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So that was really cool and I had I just had a ton of confidence going into my senior season.
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And then obviously the DQ at ACC is kind of gave me that last little bit of fuel for the fire.
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Yeah, let's talk about that First.
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I want to just say for our listeners cause we do have a lot of triathletes, yes, we do have a lot of triathletes.
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Yes, friends, we are talking about a 1524 minute.
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Mile was 1650, which is pretty much a 1500, a little bit different, but about the same time, so that I think you're probably the fastest miler we've ever had on the show, but it's a 1524 mile.
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So you come in as a freshman with a 1524 mile and then your fifth year, you just went 1439.
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Is that right?
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1429.
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1429.
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Wow, sorry.
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Almost a minute I can see.
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Yeah, almost a minute, that's just a huge drop.
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And then you're talking about Ross Dant, which you said Ross, but not Ross Dant's last name, and we're going to get into Ross here a little bit.
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When we talk about this, that happened to you.
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So the, the idea of a comeback is so.
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It's so inspiring, it's so enticing and it's one of the things that we talk about a lot on the show, because it's just when you can listen to a podcast and you hear about a comeback from anybody.
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I just interviewed a really great actually she's.
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She's a miler too, she's done the, she's the fastest woman ever to do the English channel and she's swam a really fast mile.
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And she just told the comeback story of her having pneumonia, just thinking she's going to the, the ER doc, the doc in the box to get a thing of medicine, and she ends up in the hospital having lung surgery, and so she came back from that and set a world record of master's world record.
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But it's just you, just we love the comeback story.
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So your comeback story is in.
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It may be so personalized to me I'm probably going to cry here, owen, because the emotion that you, you showed in this.
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So here's.
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I'm going to just give you my like 30 second summary of what I saw.
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And then, of course, we want to hear everything that happened to you.
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So I am watching the ACC championships.
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This is the your senior year.
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You have never won an ACC championship title.
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You win the 1650, which is just gut-wrenching grueling.
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Anybody who knows that it's, it's just so painful.
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You win your senior year.
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This is a big, big deal and, like so many people, you get on the lane rope to celebrate your win.
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You guys are at Greensboro that's kind of the home pool and the crowd the kind of hometown crowds going nuts.
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You sit on the lane rope, like many people In fact.
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I'm going to just throw this in here Did you notice that Justin Yep celebrated his NCAA 200 breaststroke victory, got on the lane rope and fell into his competitor's lane?
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All right.
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Yes, I actually laughed with some of my friends when that happened but the race was over so he was fine.
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Yeah, he was fine.
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But so you celebrate.
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You fall into your competitor's lane.
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Who's done so?
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Everyone in the pool has completed the race, except one of the end lanes.
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I don't know which lane it was, but the lane that you actually fell into was Ross Ross Stant, your fellow teammate, who finished second.
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And so you your senior year.
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You're great, we're all going crazy.
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I'm watching this at home on TV and I'm very good friends with Mark Bernardino and an NC State distance all American alum, just like you, and I am just one, two and I'm celebrating.
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And they always interview the winner of those races.
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And so you go over to be interviewed by the on-camera person.
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And not only does this happen to you just as a experience that you lived with, but it happened in front of the world and it was a viral moment where, at that moment, when the microphone and the camera is on you, about to be interviewed as the new ACC champion, they announced that you are disqualified for leaving your lane during the race.
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And the reason it was during the race is because somebody was swimming in the end lane, and that only happens to the distance people, because everybody else is done Like we said, yep, when the NCAAs.
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He fell into it and to another lane and that race was done.
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So you have a very emotional moment, kind of a fall to your knees crying moment, which is totally understandable.
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And I just wonder if you know how many other of us like me.
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I'm in my living room and I fall to my knees crying.
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It's this moment that the world, you shared this moment with the world, and I just feel like the vulnerability, the power of that moment, the potentially unfairness of it all, but rules are rules.
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So that's the perspective of an observer.
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And then, of course, ross handled it in the most sportsmanlike way, saying you won fair and square.
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I mean, it's not like you got any advantage.
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He's deeming you the advantage.
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He's he's deeming you the champion, he gives you his award, he's like the ultimate teammate.
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And kudos to Ross.
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Yeah, I love the guy.
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And so, from your perspective and I know you've gone through this a lot of times, but to come back, and then we will follow up that you actually, one year later to the day, came back and won the ACC's when you really were not predicted to, and there was somebody in there that had swum faster than you that year and it's a fifth year and did this crush your spirit and could you do it again, and the pressure of it.
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And then there's kind of another fall to the knees moment of everybody in there watching you win it again a year later and just being incredibly joyful.
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It's just it for me again, a personal connection to NC State and that event and you and Mark.
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It was just to me one of the greatest comeback stories in sports and it's kind of like that to the world.
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But I'm going to stop talking now.
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That was way more than 30 seconds, I'm sorry, and it's kind of like that to the world, but I'm going to stop talking now.
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That was way more than 30 seconds, I'm sorry, but it's, it's just.
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It was quite a powerful thing that you did, owen, and quite an amazing thing that you did, and I first just want to say congratulations.
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What an inspiration.
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You touched my heart, my soul of this and I know there's thousands, if not tens of thousands, of other people.
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So, from your perspective, tell us about this experience.
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Yeah.
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So I'll kind of walk you through just both this year last year's ACC as well as this year.
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I mean that race me and Ross had been talking about it the whole meet.
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I'd been having a good meet.
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So I was like, okay man, like okay man, I think, like I think it's gonna be me and you like we got this.
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And he had been there before he'd been an ACC champion his sophomore junior year in the mile or the 500 and it was a really really good race.
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I swam it really well.
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I dropped like three or four seconds from a mid-season time, which is also really good then, and that would have been my second ever college win, that 2024 ACC championship.
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And yeah, I think it was a culmination.
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Like the reason I showed so much emotion was because I cared so much and I'd put so much into it.
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When I talked about like my discipline, obviously I translated that for almost two and a half years, maybe more, just into everything that I did in my life.
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So that was like three years of just hard work kind of built up and I mean everyone, everyone saw it.
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I I cared a lot about that race, I cared a lot about that finish and I didn't know this at the time, but the rule is actually discretionary, so the official had the option to to not call it, but decided that they did not like what I was doing.
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That was a big reason of the uproar, at least within the swimming community, and then obviously it got millions of views on youtube this one video and I I don't even know how many elsewhere.
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So, yeah, that was, that was hard and it gave me a ton of nerves for 2024 NCAAs where I got fifth with 1439.
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But I think those nerves really helped me the next year, so could you talk about the disqualification and the reality that your name wasn't going to be on the board as an ACC champion, kind of the aftermath.
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What was the darkest point of that disqualification for you and what was your mindset around that when it came, or did it ever come?
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Yeah, probably two or so weeks after ACC is when we kind of got back into really hard training for NCAAs.
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Obviously, I'd seen all the stuff online and there were just a lot of thoughts going on in my head.
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I was obviously really upset, even just at myself too, because I was just finding anything to blame.
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Obviously I shouldn't have been.
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What I did made sense, but yeah, there was definitely.
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It made me nervous.
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I wouldn't.
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I wouldn't say I was depressed.
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Obviously, I had a lot of good people around me and there was just more anger, I think, and sadness in that moment.
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But I kind of had to push those away and and really focus on what was going on, because I wanted to be there for my team and in CAAs I want to be able to perform Me and Dino butted heads a little bit that week.
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I remember we had a pretty bad argument at practice where he was trying to motivate me, brought it up and I was like I can't deal with that right now.
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So there was that.
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So that was a little bit of that anger.
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But yeah, I think that in-between period between those two meets was just super stressful and I mean that definitely helped me going forward, being able to get past that and still put up a decent time.
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But in c's, yeah, I would say right after, during that hard training, because when you double taper, I mean you're, you get right back to it, you're doing some of the hardest sets.
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We did something like six, five hundreds, like on 530, like go sub 440, sub 4435, sub 430, twice.
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So that that was the one where I came to a head with Dino and we argued a little bit.
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So I just remember that practice pretty vividly actually I love that.
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Yeah, so then your fifth year.
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Had you always planned to take the fifth year, or did the disqualification play into that?
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No, even from after, like my sophomore year, braden had talked to me about it just because he I think he could see that I was someone who was going to keep improving and with with trials being that summer, it made perfect sense to stay in it, so that was always the plan.
00:18:19.531 --> 00:18:23.904
I'm so happy that I was able to get that opportunity.
00:18:23.904 --> 00:18:29.434
Obviously, a lot of bad things came out of COVID, but that was one of the good things in my life that I was able to get from that.
00:18:31.105 --> 00:18:36.887
So yeah, I knew that obviously I focused on trials after NCAAs but I stayed in shape throughout the summer.
00:18:36.887 --> 00:18:38.636
I didn't have the greatest meet long course.
00:18:38.636 --> 00:18:51.734
We went to Colorado Springs in May, did a ton of long course freestyle training, which actually kind of messed up my shoulder a little bit, so I had to deal with that too, going into short course season in our training room a lot.
00:18:51.734 --> 00:19:03.734
But yeah, the fifth year was so good to have that and I think that really gave me a lot of motivation for the harder practices and the harder parts in the fall where we're doing a lot of rocktober training, as to call it.
00:19:05.125 --> 00:19:10.532
So you get the DQ, you go to NCAAs, you have a great mile, your best time up to that point.
00:19:10.532 --> 00:19:29.388
Then you have the summer trials and you go back to training in the fall, prior to going and resurrecting this loss and winning the ACC's again in not nearly as likely a scenario, or nearly as friendly a scenario, with a lot more pressure.
00:19:29.388 --> 00:19:31.815
Did it start out from the very beginning of the year?
00:19:31.815 --> 00:19:34.569
I'm going to win ACC's or was it just kind of in the background?
00:19:34.569 --> 00:19:35.672
Yeah, no pressure.
00:19:35.672 --> 00:19:39.626
How is the plan for the year going into that?
00:19:41.270 --> 00:19:42.313
yeah, I didn't want to like.
00:19:42.313 --> 00:19:44.738
I didn't want it to like dominate my headspace.
00:19:44.738 --> 00:19:49.856
I think I've learned a lot about mental clarity and just having a good mindset going into things.
00:19:49.856 --> 00:19:55.176
I would use it for motivation a lot in certain practices where I didn't feel good.
00:19:55.176 --> 00:19:58.134
I was like come on, like you got to give yourself the best chance you can.
00:19:58.134 --> 00:20:12.625
And we actually had David Bethlehem, the Hungarian guy, who was there and I was like this guy is my competition, because at that point the Cal distance freestyler hadn't come because he was a January guy but unfortunately David had to go back to Hungary.
00:20:12.707 --> 00:20:15.353
Problems with the federation, I won't get into all that.
00:20:15.353 --> 00:20:22.204
But now then after that I was like, okay, it's like it's me and Lance, maybe some other people, but like I know that I've done the work.
00:20:22.204 --> 00:20:25.371
So I, I just I kept building.
00:20:25.371 --> 00:20:41.952
My biggest thing throughout the hard training parts of the year is kind of getting these test sets that really really give me that confidence that I know that during a race I'm going to be able to be able to hold on so that I can go out fast enough, because that's something I've had to like kind of focus on in college.
00:20:41.952 --> 00:20:53.127
Obviously, as a club swimmer I was pretty done with my strategies where I would kind of finish the last 50 and be three or two or three seconds faster and I'm like, okay, I knew I had more and yeah, I had.
00:20:53.147 --> 00:20:54.632
I had really good dual meet swims.
00:20:54.632 --> 00:21:01.333
I posted the best time 847 in the thousand in Georgia, and then me and Lance went really fast in mid-season.
00:21:01.333 --> 00:21:12.511
And then obviously the Lucas Henvo, the Belgium Olympian, was added to Cal's roster kind of surprisingly in January and then he posted a 14.29.
00:21:12.511 --> 00:21:24.590
And like I know that I've done work to go that time, but obviously you never know like how you're going to feel at a race, how you're going to feel during it, obviously still dealing with my shoulder stuff, like I don't know how it's going to impact me.
00:21:24.590 --> 00:21:34.522
So yeah, there, I don't think I said like I have to win, because I knew that would have done too much to my mind.
00:21:34.522 --> 00:21:40.103
I was like I'm okay with what's going to happen, but I never counted myself out.
00:21:40.103 --> 00:21:46.771
And do you want me to go into like just the pre-race strategy and like, yeah, what was going on?
00:21:47.012 --> 00:21:55.357
Yeah, yeah and I would love for you to address a couple of things while you're talking about, like that mental clarity you talked about, so just maybe, what that means to you.
00:21:55.357 --> 00:22:06.510
Like, like also, what are you thinking when you're in that grueling pain in the middle of the race, like you hit the hit 45 on the the counter and you're like, oh no, I've got another 500.
00:22:06.510 --> 00:22:07.913
How am I feeling?
00:22:07.913 --> 00:22:22.089
And then also talk about some of the test set, or a test set that might have gotten you ready for that, and then, just then, leading up to it, I'd love to know and what and what you felt when you hit the wall and saw yeah.
00:22:22.190 --> 00:22:27.738
So two of the test sets that we've done the last three years the first one is during Christmas training.
00:22:27.738 --> 00:22:32.020
It's eight, 800 short course yards on eight minutes were suited.
00:22:32.020 --> 00:22:38.990
My goal was to be around seven, 30 on all of them or descend to kind of.
00:22:38.990 --> 00:22:41.702
So I started out 740, kind of descended down each one.
00:22:41.702 --> 00:22:44.414
I actually finished with a 718, which was really really good for me.
00:22:44.414 --> 00:22:46.464
So that was one of the ones that gave me confidence.
00:22:46.464 --> 00:22:53.519
And then Dino loves a set where we do 33, one fifties on, like one, 45 suited as well.
00:22:53.519 --> 00:23:04.200
One aerobic, one white, one go and I held 116 low to 115 high and then finished with a 114.
00:23:04.200 --> 00:23:05.782
Oh, also short course.
00:23:05.782 --> 00:23:11.269
And yeah, those, those two were really really good confidence boosters because they were better than I had ever been and yeah.
00:23:11.651 --> 00:23:17.393
So, mental clarity this is something that I've worked on, or worked on a while back with sports psych.
00:23:17.393 --> 00:23:29.837
I did a few meetings with them just to kind of get negative thoughts out of my head, and I do this during practice as well as during meets, where I play music in my head, almost like kind of singing to myself, but not really.
00:23:29.837 --> 00:23:33.173
It's always songs that I know and it helps if I have music in practice.
00:23:33.173 --> 00:23:45.201
But for me specifically, I have three songs in the mile where I'll play them in my head and obviously I still think some, but it kind of keeps me in my rhythm, keeps me in my zone.
00:23:45.201 --> 00:23:56.935
And that last one is one that I know will kind of like I don't know like trigger my body to make me give it all I have Like sometimes when I'm just listening to it in the car I'll get goosebumps because I've like trained my mind that way.
00:23:56.935 --> 00:23:59.715
So I play those.
00:23:59.715 --> 00:24:03.018
Before the races I listened to some other music to hype me up.
00:24:03.018 --> 00:24:07.882
I have a pretty very, very strict three hours routine in the mile because I always have so much time.
00:24:07.882 --> 00:24:27.733
So I'll warm up about 2000 yards and then 50 minutes before my race I'll I'll take some caffeine, put my suit on, do a 500 or so suited with some pace, and then I get warm and I listen to my music to get kind of in that racing zone.
00:24:27.733 --> 00:24:33.153
But I get into the zone throughout the day because I'm usually racing in the afternoon.
00:24:33.153 --> 00:24:40.859
So that that zone really has been something that I've kind of cultivated and worked on over the last four years.
00:24:40.880 --> 00:24:46.990
Yeah, and then during the race I mean I knew that I had to stick with Envo and I was right next to him, which is great.
00:24:46.990 --> 00:24:48.255
I got a little bit of a draft.
00:24:48.255 --> 00:24:49.961
He's a big guy and that was nice.
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