Sometimes, you’re just in the right place at the right time. Sedona Red Rock High School junior Carlos Lattanzi was fine-tuning the stroke rate of his breaststroke during a recent training session in Flagstaff when the man in the lane next to him offered unsolicited advice. Lattanzi worked with him and saw results quickly.
The man’s name was Felipe Lima, from Brazil. When he got home following the workout, Lattanzi searched for Lima online and discovered he was a semi-finalist in the men’s 100-meter breaststroke at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo.
This isn’t the first time Lattanzi’s Flagstaff training sessions have rewarded him with sage advice and training. Just a couple of weeks ago, he says, Lattanzi happened to be at the pool at the same time as Denmark’s men’s Olympic team.
A Danish coach approached him, noticing he was doing a similar workout as the Olympic swimmers. So the coach extended an invitation to the high schooler, who turns 17 on Wednesday. And to his own surprise, Lattanzi stayed afloat in the pool with Olympians.
“I think I was trying a little harder than they were,” he laughed. “But I was happy that I was keeping up with them. They were going pretty fast, I’d say, so I was like that’s a good indicator of where I’m at in swimming.”
Where the Lights Shine Brightest
If his experiences with Brazilian and Danish Olympians isn’t indicative of Lattanzi’s world-class potential, then his times are. At the Arizona USA Swimming Short Course Senior State Championships in Mesa, which took place over four days in early March, he raced in six events. He placed in the top six in five of those events, highlighted by a second-place finish in the 400 individual medley with a mark of four minutes and one second.
Lattanzi is a multiple-time high school state champion. His club, Phoenix-based Swim Neptune, won the team event at those state championships, where he earned 65 points for the team. But there’s no accomplishment he’s prouder of in his swimming career thus far than that second-place finish in the 400 IM.
“Obviously I’ve won state and I’ve broken state records but that’s the fastest time I’ve ever gotten,” he said. “I’m much closer to the Junior National cut, which I’ve been training for the past couple of months.”
Lattanzi describes the Junior Nationals as his “ultimate goal.” To qualify for the event in December, he needs to drop his 400 IM time down three seconds to 3:58 in the short-course race, a goal he says is obtainable.
Rollin’ Solo
As if qualifying for a national event wasn’t difficult enough on its own, Lattanzi is doing it all without consistent coaching. The two-hour drive down to Phoenix for Club Neptune isn’t always do-able for someone with the course-load of a high school junior, and the Sedona Red Rock swim team isn’t in season. So Lattanzi often takes matters into his own hands for his training regimen, swimming laps at the Hilton Sedona Resort at Bell Rock or taking the short trip to Flagstaff to swim at elevation.
“I run my own workouts, I have my own little clock,” he said. “I run my own practice. I’m just trying to push myself.”
If he feels that something is off he’ll ask his father to come watch and give tips on how to correct his form, but other than that Lattanzi is mostly on his own. He spends much of his free time watching professional swimmers to try to emulate their form. He mentions that he’s currently watching American Coleman Stewart’s backstroke, in an effort to shave time off his underwater turns.
The resiliency and drive in a young swimmer like Lattanzi catches the attention of coaches at the higher levels. He says he’s heard from NCAA Division I programs from the Big Ten, ACC and Pac-12 Conferences and sees himself swimming at the collegiate level after his senior year of high school. With the track he’s on at such a young age, get used to seeing Lattanzi’s name.
