“It’s pretty exciting to be back with the Dors,” she said. “I feel that we clicked really well last year as a team. There are newcomers on the team, but with the chemistry from the returners, we will all be really good as a team again.”
She noted that it is “cool” to have Jason Lezak as her team’s General Manager since he is an “American hero.” “Jason is so good at our team meetings, and he has been in our shoes before, so it’s really cool,” she said.
Margalis listed the breaststroke as her personal favorite stroke. She opened up about the postponement of the Tokyo Olympic Games to 2021. “It was a bummer for sure, but for me, I am just trying to take advantage of the postponement. I had one of the greatest swims of my life in March [of 2020], and I told myself that if the universe is giving me another year to get ready after having that swim before I race in Tokyo, I want to take advantage of the time,” she said.
She won a gold medal for Team USA as part of the 4 × 200 meter freestyle relay team at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, and she won a gold and a silver medal for Team USA at the World Championships in Gwangju in 2019. “I love every chance I get to represent the USA. It’s so special and when you are on Team USA, you always just want to do your best because it has a history of greatness within USA Swimming. It is always such an honor to race for Team USA,” she said.
For young and aspiring swimmers, she encouraged them “to have as much fun as possible.” “That is my No. 1 thing,” she admitted. “I’m always smiling, so I always tell other people to do that. Even if you don’t feel like smiling, you force yourself to smile and you feel that happiness. When you are having fun, smiling and laughing, it really makes you swim so much better.”
“My teammates that I like to swim by are the ones that make me laugh, and that’s helpful in practice to get you through everything,” she added.
On the title of the current chapter of her life, Margalis responded, “Go with the flow.”
She shared that she enjoys using a Hypervolt to warm up her forearms before practice with it. “I also have a vibrating foam roller, and I use it every day. I just love it. I feel it works better than anything that we were using before,” she said.
Margalis defined the word success as “doing the best that you can do.”
For her fans and supporters, she extended “a huge thank you.” “In the last year, I feel like I’ve had more people in my corner helping me out. Without them, I wouldn’t have known what the last year would have looked like,” she said.
To learn more about Melanie Margalis, follow her on Instagram and on Twitter.
