Olympic medal eluded father, but Carmel swimming siblings can get on Paris podium
CARMEL – There is swim talk around the Shackell dinner table. How could there not be?
The father, Nick, represented Great Britain at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. He met the mother, the former Ali Hansen, when they were All-America swimmers at Auburn. Their three children — Aaron, 19, and twins Alex and Andrew, 17 — have all qualified for the U.S. Olympic Trials, which open Saturday at Lucas Oil Stadium.
What they don’t discuss is what-might-have-been.
Nick might have come away from Atlanta with a medal. The British seemingly qualified for the final of the 4x100-meter medley relay with one of the top times, but the team, which included Nick Shackell, was disqualified.
So no Olympic medal.
Team Shackell is poised to reclaim a medal in Paris.
More: How Noblesville swimmer went from outside top 1,000 teens to Olympic trials contender
Alex is a contender in as many as four women’s events, plus relays. Aaron’s best shot is the men’s 200-meter freestyle, in which top six customarily are selected to Team USA.
That Alex could medal is no surprise. As young as 8, she had a whiteboard counting down the days to the Olympics.
At least since age 12, she has been setting records. Last year, at 16, she became the first out of the Carmel girls program to make a World Championships team and won a silver medal in the 4x200 freestyle relay at Fukuoka, Japan. She could be the first female Carmel Olympian, too.
Aaron... well, he just was not into it. He said he didn’t think he was going to be any good. He swam but liked football, basketball and tennis better. He could have left the pool altogether.
“If I quit swimming, I’m just going to play video games,” he said. “There’s nothing else I’m going to be doing. My grades aren’t amazing.
“For a little bit, it was a way to get to college and go to a school I want to go to. Then I moved past that.”
He grew past that. Before the pandemic, he stood 5-11. Afterward, 6-4. Now, 6-6.
In January 2021, the Shackells relocated to Carmel from St. Louis. By the next month, Aaron, as a sophomore, had qualified for the high school state meet, where he was sixth in the 500-yard freestyle and 10th in the 200 freestyle. He wasn’t yet fast enough to make Carmel’s relay teams.
Chris Plumb, coach of Carmel’s high school and club teams, said Aaron wanted to be part of a team and blossomed in a new environment.
“I think he’s much more understanding of himself as an athlete and a person,” Plumb said. “That evolution is great to see as a coach. That’s what we’re after. Transforming as people.”
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There have been multiple stops on the path to Paris, if indeed one of the Shackells makes it.
Nick Shackell grew up in Surrey, England, and chose UCLA for college swimming. UCLA shut down its program after his freshman year, so he transferred to Auburn. At Auburn, he was captain of the school’s first NCAA championship team in 1997.
Then-coach David Marsh, now at California and a former U.S. Olympic coach, called Nick Shackell the “cornerstone” of that Auburn team.
Ali Shackell grew up in Dana Point, Calif., and, coincidentally, was recruited by UCLA. She, too, ended up at Auburn. Her link to her husband’s Olympics is that she competed in the 1994 NCAA meet at Indianapolis along with Colorado State’s Amy Van Dyken, who won four gold medals in 1996.
All three siblings were born in Mission Viejo, Calif., whose swimmers have been setting world records and winning Olympic medals since the 1970s.
The family moved from California to Nashville, Tenn., where they lived for 11 years. They moved again, to Missouri and then to Indiana. Nick Shackell is a vice president of business development for Enterprise Mobility, the vehicle rental company.
Arrival in Carmel didn’t necessarily change the outlook of Alex, who has been characterized as a perfectionist by her coach and a “bundle of energy” by her father. The daughter had long ago abandoned basketball, running and tennis.
“I’ve been the only child in this family who liked swimming the whole time,” she said.
It was different for the two sons. They kinda hated it.
As their mother put it: This is Carmel. They swim here. (The high school girls are up to a record 38 successive state titles, the boys 10 in a row.)
Aaron said he had never been around swimmers so committed or so accomplished or so much faster. They made junior nationals and Olympic Trials cuts.
As deadline approached for the 2021 Olympic Trials, 16-year-old Aaron swam a time trial in the 200-meter butterfly, in which he had once come close to the cut. Somehow, he said, he made it.
“I realized if I can do that, if I can make myself perform like that, then I can pretty much do anything,” he said.
In the trials at Omaha, Neb., combining waves 1 and 2, he finished 67th out of 73. That was not the point. He was on his way.
A summer later, in the Junior Pan Pacific meet at Waipahu, Hawaii, Aaron set a meet record in the 200 butterfly and won a gold medal. So maybe the parents, who assured him he was as talented as his sister, were right all along. His time would come, and had come.
“I trusted the process,” Aaron said. “You don’t need to put too much pressure on yourself. Let everything come to you, and it’ll all work out.”
The following February, at the 2023 state meet, he set a national high school record of 1:32.85 in the 200-yard freestyle. That broke the record of 1:32.99 by Carson Foster of Cincinnati in 2019 and state record of 1:33.30 by Drew Kibler of Carmel in 2017.
Then, last August, Aaron won a bronze medal in the 200-meter freestyle in the under-23 European Championships at Dublin, Ireland.
Foster and Kibler, both of the University of Texas, were on the U.S. team winning a gold medal in the 4x200 freestyle relay at the 2023 worlds. Aaron Shackell heads to Texas, too.
He started at Cal last fall but left school to resume training here. Never should have left Carmel before the Olympics, he said. He knew what worked, and that was the program here.
“I think he really kind of said, ‘Hey, this is who I am,’“ Plumb said.
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Here are a couple of incidents reflecting who Alex Shackell is.
First, in last year’s nationals at Indianapolis, she was third in the 200 butterfly through 150 meters. Top two made the world team. She faded to fifth, behind winner Regan Smith. And Alex was one spot away from the A final in the 100 freestyle.
That represented two disappointments, but “she’s in the mix,” Plumb said.
The next morning, Alex was in the 200 freestyle, in which she was seeded 45th. Not only did she make the finals, she finished fifth and did make the world team.
“She goes, ‘They didn’t know I had the 200 free today and what I was capable of,’“ Plumb said. “The easy thing was to say, ‘I will look to next year.’“
Second, Alex was candid at a team meeting in Singapore before last year’s World Championships. Coaches asked each swimmer what they brought to the team. Alex replied she was not afraid to get on the blocks and race the one in the next lane.
“I guess they took it to heart because they put me in last,” she said.
Surprisingly, she ended up on the anchor of the relay against Ariarne Titmus, the reigning Olympic gold medalist in the 200 freestyle. Unsurprisingly, Titmus overtook Shackell and delivered a gold medal and world record to Australia.
Yet it wasn’t because Shackell trembled in the moment. Her parents said that is what they appreciate about Carmel’s program, especially out of the water.
“Plumb and his staff really teach them how to be brave. They’re just not intimidated,” the mother said.
No, Alex is not.
In December’s East winter juniors, her time through 150 yards of the 200 butterfly was faster than Smith’s pace in an American record. Alex finished in 1:50.15, making her No. 6 American ever with a time that would have won this year’s NCAAs.
And it was her 13th race out of 14 over four days, including a couple of 500 freestyles.
Some teens are better in a 25-yard pool, which can emphasize underwater kicking over actual swimming, than in a 50-meter pool. Alex favors an Olympic-sized, long course pool.
“Like Chris says,” she added, “long course is the truth.”
She and her coach said they have been training to increase stamina for the last 50 meters, but neither do they want to undermine her greatest strength — front-end speed. It would be like cautioning Simone Biles to be less explosive or asking Caitin Clark to quit logo 3-pointers.
“I don’t notice I’m going out fast. It just flows,” Alex said.
She swam in the 2021 trials at Omaha as a 14-year-old, an introduction to what she will experience in Indianapolis.
So the enormity of the stakes or of the stadium should not rattle her. Indeed, she spoke excitedly about the 100 and 200 freestyles, even though butterfly is her signature stroke.
“I think she knows what she wants,” Plumb said. “She’s very determined to get it.”
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Andrew Shackell is a top high school swimmer — third in the state in the 50 freestyle and 100 butterfly — but wasn’t necessarily on track for the Olympic Trials. Then he qualified in the 200 freestyle, making the siblings 3-for-3.
He said he once disliked swimming because he didn’t understand what the sport taught him. He acknowledged others ask about his medal-winning siblings.
“It’s motivating because I can use them to get better, too,” Andrew said. “Even if I’m not able to get to that level — which I definitely want to do — even if I can’t, they can still help me get the best of my ability.”
The father, who has been around this sport for decades, called Carmel unique — an elite club attached to a high school. Some teens are training for club meets, some to get on a high school relay, some to make a state or national cut, some to reach an Olympic Trials. Or even an Olympics.
Nick Shackell said his children have matured, and any confidence they build in the pool has spilled over into life. Or, if there are failures, how to cope.
“I think that’s more important than the actual swimming,” Aaron said.
The siblings were not due to arrive home until days before the Olympic Trials after nearly three weeks of training with Carmel teammates at the 6,035-foot altitude of Colorado Springs, Colo.
So the only Shackells swimming in Carmel this month were the parents, who do so an hour each day at the Monon Community Center. The mother said she went 15 years without watching any swimming, but now it is a sport they can collectively enjoy.
If the boys want to get away from it, they watch “Top Gear,” a British television program featuring cars. Coincidentally, the show connects them to the father’s ancestry.
More coincidental is the title. Top gear? For the Shackells, that is a speed that can propel them across the Atlantic and into France.
Contact IndyStar correspondent David Woods at dwoods1411@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter: @DavidWoods007.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Alex, Aaron Shackell have real chance at USA Swimming Olympic Trials
