This week on the SwimSwam Breakdown, we discuss the 2024 European Jr Championships, which male is most likely to defend his gold medal in Paris, and what Sarah Sjostrom would go in a 50y free.
On June 22, 2024, SwimSwam reported that 2020 Olympian Michael Brinegar would not be competing in the 1500m Free prelims of the 2024 US Olympic Trials after the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ruled in favor of the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA)’s allegations of blood doping during a three month period in 2022. This means that Brinegar is facing a four-year ban . Hear Brinegar's side of this 2-year process and the effect it has had on this athlete who still claims his innocence in...
Brian Benzing is an NCAA All-American for Towson in the 100 Breast, placing 2nd at the 2024 NCAA Championships in 50.59. After his first two years of high school in Maryland where he played Lacrosse, Basketball, soccer, and swam, Benzing's family moved to Norway where he spent the next 3 years and continued swimming while gradually stepping away from the other sports. Benzing ultimately returned to Maryland and attended college at Towson University, where he made huge improvements in the pool. L...
On Monday, Todd DeSorbo sat down with the press to answer questions ahead of the 2024 US Olympic Team training camp that starts in Cary, North Carolina and will move to Croatia ahead of the Olympic Games in Paris. DeSorbo discusses the selection of the Olympic team coaching staff, UVA swimmers that made the Olympic team, and much more.
Join Coleman Hodges, David Clossey (aka The Swim Scribe), and NCAA Champ Brendan Burns as we do a deep dive into the 2024 US Olympic Trials.
Thanks to @malmstenab3682 and the CEO of Malmsten Inc, Mikael Orn for this inside look into the company and team that has provided swimming's lane lines for the last ten Olympic Games! Malmsten has very deep roots in swimming. Tommy and Margareta Malmsten founded the Swedish company in 1974. Tommy, a former competitive swimmer and national Swedish coach, combined his love of swimming with his skills as an engineer to develop top-notch gear for the swimming community. Malmsten wanted to remain tr...
Join us as we go down the psych sheet, event by event, and choose our picks for who will make the 2024 US Olympic team in Indianapolis.
https://youtu.be/k2vojNuX1Oc Kensey McMahon is an NCAA Champion from 2023 and a world championship medalist. On June 4, 2024, it was reported that McMahon had received a 4-year suspension by USADA after testing positive for a banned substance (Vadadustat). Kensey came on the SwimSwam podcast to give her perspective not only on the positive test and verdict itself but also on the process of trying to investigate this situation. McMahon speaks to the 2+ decades she's put into swimming, the recent ...
Jeremy Bagshaw had accomplished a lot in his 20+ year career in swimming. NCAA Champion at Cal Berkeley. Commonwealth and Pan American Games medalist. Multiple-time world championships qualifier. But one thing that had eluded him (4 times, going back to 2008) was qualifying for Canada's Olympic team. Last month at the Canadian Trials, in what would have been his final race as a competitive swimmer, Bagshaw finished 4th in the 200 free, securing his spot on the Olympic team for the first time. Ba...
Missy Franklin was a 5x Olympic gold medalist and world record holder in the pool. Now outside of it, Franklin is having just as much success. She's a parent (3-year-old daughter, Caitlin, with her husband Hayes Johnson), a member of the media (hosts the podcast Unfiltered Waters with fellow Olympian Katie Hoff), and an ambassador for the USA Swimming Foundation. In this episode, we discuss the upcoming Olympic Trials with Franklin, who will be in Indianapolis with the USA Swimming Foundation an...
Olympic Champion Betsy Mitchell is a renaissance woman in the sports world, a 2-time Olympian, gold medalist, 7-time NCAA champion, former college swimming coach, and the current Athletic Director of Cal Tech. Betsy's roots run deep in sport, which is why she's co-authored her first book with Ann Worthington, MORE THAN MEDALS, Lessons From An Olympian. I say "her first book" because a follow-up will be coming soon. Betsy's forthcoming in this conversation, bringing wisdom and perspective to the ...
This week on the SwimSwam Breakdown, we discuss a myriad of eye-catching swims over the last two weeks as many countries' Olympic Trials draw near.
Sam Hoekstra was an NCAA All-American for Louisville, graduating in 2013. Since then, Hoekstra has stayed close to the sport via coaching club and doing clinics for Fitter and Faster. Hoekstra wasn't swimming regularly, though, and certainly not sprinting regularly. However, after the idea of sprinting a 50 free for 100 days straight was presented to him, Hoekstra decided to give it a go. His first 50 was 22.2 (25-yard pool). After the first week, he switched from a brief to wearing a tech suit....
Blaire Anderson was recently named Director of Swimming & Diving at Texas A&M University, marking a big turning point in Aggie swimming history. With coaches Steve Bultman and Jay Holmes stepping down after their combined 60+ years at the helm of the respective women's and men's programs, Anderson looks to build upon the legacy that is already palpable in College Station. Anderson has already hired 3 coaches for her staff and is looking forward to continuing to build the network of peopl...
University of Virginia swimming hosted a media day for a number of their top athletes and coaches. Listen to Alex and Gretchen Walsh, Todd DeSorbo, Kate Douglass, and Jack Aikins field questions from the national media before the upcoming US Olympic Trials next month in Indianapolis.
SwimSwam's Coleman Hodges sat down with Ben Loorz, the new head coach of swimming & diving at the University of Arizona. Loorz breaks down why this was the right move for both him and his family at this time as well as how he plans to start carrying out his vision for UofA in these first few weeks. Loorz is coming from UNLV, where he was the head coach for 8 seasons and produced NCAA qualifiers in all of them.
This week on the SwimSwam Breakdown, we discuss the Canadian Olympic Trials, the Mid-May flurry of meets in the US, and if any of the swims this past weekend moved the needle on the Paris Podiums.
Joining us today, we have a man in his 33rd year of coaching college swimming, 28 of those years as head coach. He is a 4-time Big Ten Coach of Year. Today we have The Ohio State Director of Swimming & Diving, William "Bill" Dorenkott.
Chase Kalisz is a 2x Olympian and the reigning Olympic champion in the 400 IM. He's gearing up for his 4th Olympic Trials, which are just one month away, with a training camp in Colorado Springs. His coach there, Bob Bowman, has thrown some pretty gnarly sets at him throughout the last couple weeks, which Kalisz explains. The former Georgia Bulldog also speaks about recovery away from practice, his mentality heading into his 4th Olympic Trials, and the importance of his sponsors heading into Ind...
This week in the SwimSwam Breakdown, we discuss the Brazilian Olympic Trials, the Sydney Open, and the upcoming May Meets in the USA
Olympic medalist and World Champion Alex Walsh and NCAA swimming superstar Gretchen Walsh, take us behind the scenes of their latest SPORTI collab, the Star Spangled Summer Collection. The collection is inspired by Americana vibes as a nod to the country’s, and the sister’s, collective spirit going into the 2024 Olympic Summer. Coming off of UVA's 2024 NCAA Championship Team Title, the Walsh Sister dove right into their SPORTI photo capture for this collection. They only took a few days off. The...
Matt Leach was recently announced as the new head coach for Iowa State Swimming and Diving. This surprised many as Leach had massive success at his last stop, Washington State, and most likely could have landed a job at a more traditional powerhouse. However, Leach explains that his first priority is family and his wife's parents live nearby. He also dives into his coaching journey and why building a team into a family is much more fulfilling to him than having the status of coaching at a Top-10...
Tunisian swimmer Ahmed Hafnaoui, the reigning Olympic gold medalist in the 400 freestyle, will not be competing at the upcoming 2024 Paris Olympics. According to Africa Aquatics, this news was revealed by Tunisian Olympic Committee head Mehrez Bousyan on a televised sports program and had also been confirmed by Hafnaoui himself.
Olympic and world champion Kyle Chalmers just had one of the best in-season meets of his career last month at the Australian Open, going lifetime bests in the 50 free (21.9) and 50 fly (23.1) as well as a 47.6 in the 100 free. This is coming on the heels of moving clubs to train with Ash Delaney at St. Andrews on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland.
This week on the SwimSwam Breakdown, we discuss Summer McIntosh's potential lineup for the 2024 Canadian Olympic Trials, a high school swim team getting locked out of their section meet, and the major moves that have happened so far in the NCAA off-season.
During the 2024 Polish Swimming Championships (which qualify swimmers for the 2024 Olympics in Paris this summer), a swimmer in the Women's 200 IM final ended up in the wrong lane halfway through the race and ended up getting disqualified for it. We discuss how this happened, why it was a DQ, and what questions this raises about the rules for this race.
SwimSwam Co-Founders Braden Keith (Editor-in-Chief) and Mel Stewart (CEO) sit down to divulge how the story of 23 Chinese swimmers testing positive and walking away unscathed unfolded over the weekend and what it means moving forward. Stewart and Keith discuss USADA's role in breaking this story, what WADA's independent investigation could bring to light, and the plausibility that this was actually caused by a contaminated kitchen vs intentional doping.
2x Olympic Champion and now 3x British Olympian James Guy spoke with SwimSwam after it came to light over the weekend that 23 Chinese swimmers had tested positive for TMZ in January of 2021. Early in the week, Guy had tweeted "Ban them all and never compete again" and expressed similar frustration today, namely in WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) for allowing such a situation to occur.
On Friday, April 19, sources told SwimSwam that the gold-medal-winning Chinese women's 800 Free Relay from the Tokyo Olympics would be disqualified and that the silver-medal USA women's team would be bumped up to gold. The next morning, the Herald Sun reported that 23 Chinese swimmers had tested positive for TMZ in January of 2021 at a training camp, just a few months before the Tokyo Olympic Games. Many of those athletes went on to win medals in Tokyo. No one had heard about this until now....
Brendan Burns is coming off of a career NCAA performance where he not only defended his NCAA title in the 100 back but also made 3 NCAA A finals for the first time. Burns reflects on his time as an Indiana Hoosier and what's next for him in and out of the pool.
