Arizona's Cordes — and his gold medal — honored before Bears-Chiefs game

Arizona’s seven-time NCAA swimming champion Kevin Cordes was honored a Saturday’s Chicago Bears-Kansas City Chiefs exhibition game at Soldier Field, pictured with a gold medal around his neck. Cordes, who was born in Naperville, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, swam in the preliminary heats of USA’s 4x100 medley relay gold medal team, but was replaced by teammate Cody Miller in the finals at Rio. But Cordes got a gold medal anyway, the same way Arizona’s 1996 NCAA Swimmer of the Year Chad Carvin did without swimming the finals at the Sydney Olympics. At 23, the timing wasn’t right for Cordes and if he stays with swimming and attempts to make the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, he is still unlikely to win an individual medal in his best event, the 100 breast stroke. The competition is so intense; in the 2012 U.S. trials, Cordes swam a then-best 1:00.58 in the 100 breast. This year he cut it to a career-best 58.94 (and 59.22 in the Olympic finals). But he needed 58.87 to get a medal. International swimming is a game of inches like few others and Cordes is Exhibit A. Somehow he needs cut another second off his best effort. 

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