Fresh off of leading Arizona State to its first NCAA team title in program history, Bob Bowman announced he would be leaving to head up the swim and dive program at Texas. A number of athletes left Arizona State following this announcement, either to follow Bob Bowman to Austin or pursue their swimming at other programs. One athlete who had trained under Bowman and was expected to follow him (from the outside) was freshman Ilya Kharun. The Canadian national had seen vast improvement under...

Hunter Armstrong was one of the more surprising narratives from Team USA at the 2024 Olympic Games. While the former world record holder in the 50 back narrowly missed the final of the 100 back, his freestyle seemed to more than make up for it. He split 46.7 to help the men win the 400 free relay then was given anchor duty on the 400 medley relay, where he split 47.1 and touched for 2nd. In this discussion, Amrstrong doesn't hold back about a number of topics. He's describes losing his...

Ben Proud had won every accolade out there in the 50m free: LCM World title, SCM world title, Commonwealth champion, European champion. But in Paris, he finally earned an individual Olympic medal, touching second for silver. Ironically, it came at a point in his career when he wasn't focused on the result of the race. After Tokyo, Proud almost stepped away from swimming entirely. He knew something about his approach to swimming had to change and it did in 2022. In the last two years, Proud...

In just 12 months, Hubi Kos became a world champion, NCAA champion, European champion, and finally Olympic champion, taking gold in Paris in the men's 200 back. With Leon Marchand as his training partner and Bob Bowman as his coach, Kos has made great strides in the pool over the last 18 months since he's lived in the US. Kos explains that Bowman obviously knows how to train athletes bodies but what really sets him apart is how he prepares his athletes mentally. Because of the rigorous...

Thomas Nguyen is best known now for being a contestant on the 21st season of The Bachelorette. But before that, he was an NCAA DII All-American for Florida Southern and trained with SwimAtlanta in hopes of representing Vietnam in the 2016 Olympic Games. Listen to what Nguyen has to say about his experience in the dating and swimming pools over the last few years.

Hong Kong's Siobhan Haughey showed out in Paris, winning bronze medals in the 100 and 200 freestyles, both of which were the fastest fields in history. That put Haughey's overall Olympic medal count at 4 (after winning double silver in Tokyo), making her the most decorated Olympian in Hong Kong's history. The world champion and NCAA All-American joined the SwimSwam podcast to discuss her experience in Paris, her iconic partnership with Chanel, and having no real training base but still...

"It’s extremely challenging to help swimmers develop skills that win races. It’s overwhelming trying to teach skills to each and every athlete, particularly when it seems like no one is listening. And everything that’s learned seems to disappear once it’s time to start training, or when it really counts in championship races that matter. The solution isn’t to get better at what you’re doing. You don’t need new drills, you don’t need new cues, and you don’t need an expensive video system. You...

10-time Olympic swimming medalist Caeleb Dressel is happy to be back on his Florida farm after the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. His results were mixed. He knows that. He knows he fought hard, and he didn't exactly have the Olympic Games he wanted. At a minimum, he's just glad he did it, went to Paris, because there were two moments when he thought he might not go at all. Dressel thought a repeat of the 2022 World Championship would happen, when he abruptly left in the middle of the competition....

Sarah Sjostrom dreamt of winning Olympic gold in the 100 free. Literally. She had a dream about herself winning a gold medal in the 100 free. Then did it. Sjostrom, the world record holder in both the 50 and 100 freestyle, had achieved everything in the sport there is to achieve in both events outside of individual Olympic titles in both. Coming into the Paris Olympics, Sjostrom herself wasn't even sure that she was going to swim the 100 free. But once Paris kicked off, the Swedish sprint...

Heading into 2024, Kate Douglass had pretty much everything one could have on a swimming resume: NCAA champion, American record holder, and world champion. In Paris last month, she added Olympic champion to that list. When the competition was over, Douglass walked away from the 2024 Olympic Games with 4 medals, 2 from Team USA relays (gold, silver) and two individually from the 200 breast (gold) and 200 IM (silver). Listen to Douglass' experience in Paris and her plans for swimming moving...

Heading into the 2024, Regan Smith had been one Olympics, won 3 medals there, won 9 world championship medals, won an NCAA title, and set 3 world records. But none of it was enough to make Smith feel good about her accomplishments in the pool. Since the 2022 season, Smith has been slowly working on changing how she views her swimming and the success that comes with it. For much of her career, she would enter a race and feel immense pressure to win, to the point that she would derail herself...

Gretchen Walsh barely missed making the 2020 U.S. Olympic Team in Tokyo, but she made up for it at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, winning four medals. Gretchen had a lot of naysayers from outside of the United States. Swim fans knew she was great based on her 2024 NCAA DI Championships performance, clearly the greatest in history. Many critics felt her yards (NCAAs) to meters (Olympic pool distance) talent would not convert. Gretchen proved her critics wrong with a fantastic Olympic debut....

Norwegian swimmer Henrik Christiansen came into his 3rd Olympic Games looking for memories in the pool but left with much, much more. After going viral during the Games on TikTok for a video featuring one of the Village's chocolate muffins, Christiansen ran with it and soon became known as the Olympic Muffin Man. Listen to what inspires Christiansen both in and out of the pool (aside from muffins) and how he's feeling after the whirlwind experience of his 3rd Olympics.

At the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, Kaylee McKeown became the first woman to ever win back-to-back Olympic titles in both the 100 and 200 backstroke. She also became Australia's most successful individual medalist with 4 golds. And surprisingly, she's just as human as the rest of us. From how she reflects on Paris, you wouldn't immediately realize her success there. McKeown is a high achiever and constantly pushing herself to great heights, which she admits can sometimes be a downfall and lead...

After his 3rd Olympics in 2021, Cam McEvoy was burnt out with swimming and retired, thinking that was it for his swimming career. After 2 years of studying high performance within weight lifting, track, and cycling, McEvoy wondered if principles from each sport could be applied to swimming. The sprint star decided to give swimming one last chance, but he was going to do it on his terms. When he proposed his training plan to many coaches, many turned him away. But once he found Tim Lane...

9-time Olympic medalist Ryan Murphy unpacks the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. Murphy takes us inside the Olympic Trials to the Olympic Games process, sharing insights, stressors, and the mood as Team USA worked through the grueling 9-day event. Murphy details his 100 back, mix medley leadoff, and the 4x100 medley leadoff. Murphy also digs into the 200 back where the 2016 Olympic champion under-swam the semi-final costing him a lane in the Olympic final.

French Swimmer Leon Marchand won 4 Gold Medals at the Paris Olympics, going a perfect 4-for-4 in his individual events. Marchand was coached by Bob Bowman leading into the Olympics, the same man who helped Michael Phelps win 8 gold medals at the Beijing Olympics in 2008. Bowman takes us into the Olympic Games and shares behind-the-scenes stories of what made Leon's accomplishment so great in Paris.

After missing Olympic qualification for Tokyo in the pool, Moesha Johnson decided to dip her toes into open water racing. In 2 short years she became a world champion, and one year after that she won her first Olympic medal, a silver in the 10k. From strategizing how to race in the Seine River to going viral in TikTok during the Games, Johnson recalls her experience in Paris in full.

SwimSwam photographer extraordinaire Jack Spitser has documented swimming at the highest level for years and is just coming off of his biggest competition yet: the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. Spitser recalls the ups and downs of travel, work/life balance (aka all work and no life), and navigating unexpected road bumps during an Olympics Games. Between having bed bugs and photographing 10+ sports over the course of two weeks, Jack gives his full perspective on his time in Paris.

The Notre Dame men’s swimming program has been suspended for a minimum of one academic year after an investigation into potential gambling. The men’s swimming and diving programs are coming off their best combined finish at NCAAs in school history as they were 10th at the 2024 NCAA Championships. Just after U.S. Olympic Trials in June, the school announced that the law firm, Ropes & Gray LLP to conduct an external review after “potential issues with the culture” of the team. Sources have...

At the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, Dan Wiffen became the first Irish swimmer to win a gold medal in swimming since 1996. After winning double distance gold at the 2024 World Championships earlier this year, the Loughborough resident swam a gutsy race in the 800 free and came out on top ahead of USA's defending champion, Bobby Finke. Wiffen explains the mindset that helped him achieve this feat and how he celebrated afterward. The distance specialist also debriefs his first (and last) foray into...

Bobby Finke walked away from the Paris Olympic Games as the back-to-back champion in the 1500 free, the world record holder in the same event, and USA's only individual male gold medalist in swimming. The distance phenom walks us through his experience in Paris, from the bittersweet feeling of earning silver in the 800 to topping the podium on the last day of competition. Finke also shows his fun side, admitting just how bad his "off" practices can get and reflecting on his limited relay...

17-year-old Alex Shackell just finished what has been, in her words, the best month of her life. This whirlwind started when she made the US Olympic team alongside her brother, Aaron, in their hometown of Indianapolis. After experiencing training camp in beautiful Croatia with Team USA, Shackell headed to Paris, where she made her first individual Olympic final and swam on two relays that earned her gold and silver medals. Once the Games concluded, Shackell returned home to spend time with...

Kyle Chalmers is an Olympic champion and after Paris, a 9x Olympic medalist, winning two silvers and a bronze at these most recent games. The Australian swimming legend logged a 47.xx (flat start and relays) seven times throughout the 9-day meet, with his only 100 free swim not in that category coming in his prelims 100 free, where he was 48.0.  Chalmers was kind enough to take some time out of his engagement celebration in Norway to chat about the highs and lows of his experience in Paris....

The 2024 Olympic Games are officially over (in the pool) so let's talk about it. We dissect the best of's from the women's swimming competition in Paris.