Commentary

Who Are You? 4 Swimmer Personalities Found on the Pool Deck Swim meets are pretty much the ideal place to people watch. Every swimmer prepares to race fast completely differently. This can all depend on your personality, your meet lineup, or even what kind of day you’re having. Yet every swimmer has...

Brian Goodell vs. Vladimir Salnikov: 'The Duel We Missed' Documentary Receiving Academy Award Consideration Documentary films, at their core, take a deep dive into a specific topic. They are detailed. They offer emotion. They introduce engaging characters and storylines. They take the viewer behind ...

How NCAA Champions Have Performed at Their Midseason Competitions: The Numbers Are Interesting As the weather begins to chill, the holiday season has arrived. It’s a time of relaxation and cheer, a break from the pressures of the world. That is, except for swimmers.  In the swimming world, the start...

Why We’re Thankful for Swimming  As Thanksgiving rolls around, swimmers, families and coaches across the country naturally find themselves thinking about what they are thankful for. Between the early mornings, the long meets, and the endless hours spent around the water, the sport has a way of shapi...

How Can Swimmers Deal With Adversity? As an athlete, you are always on display. Every time you go out to compete, you are under a microscope. Rivals assessing your results. Friends and coaches hoping for the best. Neutrals looking for an exciting race. It is a pressure cooker of an environment. Ever...

Luca Urlando, Ilya Kharun Setting Up Elite 200 Butterfly Rivalry in College and International Competition When he began his college career at Arizona State University, Ilya Kharun was already an internationally-acclaimed 200 butterfly, having surged down the stretch to tie for fourth in the World Ch...

Guest Editorial: Steps Away from Hall of Fame, Fort Lauderdale Honors Swimming’s Greatest Fraud By Daniel Slosberg If the City of Fort Lauderdale’s International Swimming Hall of Fame (ISHOF) ever completes construction of its new home, visitors will be able to learn about the sport’s greatest champ...

After Incredible World Cup Performance, Josh Liendo Shooting for Big Finish to Florida Career He raced at all three stops of the World Cup circuit, but something shifted when Josh Liendo got back on home soil for the third and final stop in Toronto. Liendo had been nowhere close to the front of the ...

Versatile American Women Must Consider New Schedule on Road to Los Angeles Olympics This year's World Championships concluded with the American team of Regan Smith, Kate Douglass, Gretchen Walsh and Torri Huske winning gold in the women's 400 medley relay in world-record time. It is impossible to fu...

Virginia’s Thomas Heilman and Maximus Williamson Among Freshmen Men in Contention This College Season Freshmen male swimmers often struggle to immediately make a scoring impact on the national level. Some swimmers arrive as already-established performers, like Canadians Ilya Kharun and Josh Liendo i...

Motivational Monday: 5 Ways to Stay Motivated - A Letter to Those Who are Stuck in the Mud Dear Struggling Swimmer, You’re tired and sore all the time, you’re not getting anywhere, and all you want to do is eat a tub of Ben and Jerry’s, get into bed, and nap for the next few weeks. If you have been ...

Six Ways Swim Parents and Coaches Can Work Together In A Beneficial Manner The coach-parent relationship is critical as athletes work toward improving and achieving their goals. In many cases, this relationship is smooth and proves beneficial. Unfortunately, there are times when parents do not give ...

The Duel We Missed: Swim Documentary Examines Political Influence on Olympic Games (Trailer Included) The United States-led boycott of the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow robbed hundreds of elite athletes of lifelong dreams, and a superb documentary by Bravo Film & Media has emphasized the impact that ...

By Katie Wingert, Swimming World College Intern Swimming alone can be a struggle between staring at the black line and wanting to smash your incessantly beeping tempo trainer with your fins. Ideally, we swimmers would always have a team to practice with. Sometimes, though, life gets complicated. Sch...

Tinkering With Pro Swim Series Should Pay Off For USA Swimming USA Swimming is reimagining its annual circuit of Pro Swim Series meets for 2026, introducing four-day formats and semifinals. The goal is to "mirror the racing environment athletes experience at major international meets and enhance lon...

From Tim Duncan to Joe Thomas: How the Pool Can Be an Athlete's Greatest Ally The pool does not care who you are. Whether All-Pro or All-American, the second you dive in, you can be humbled. The water has no favorites. In the pool, everyone is equal. It does not matter how tall you are or how much y...

Hubert Kos Continued Ascendancy With Masterful World Cup Performance More than two years have passed since Hubert Kos secured his status as the world’s top 200 backstroker when he surpassed Ryan Murphy for gold in the event at the 2023 World Championships. The following year, the Hungarian captured ...

As swimmers, we can look for quick fixes. We know that we can adjust a flip turn here, tweak a breath there, and throw in a few extra dolphin kicks off of our start—and that could shave time off of even the shortest of races. However, we are not always eager to reach for the more long-term aids to o...

Kaylee McKeown, Regan Smith Rev Up Backstroke Rivalry During World Cup Over the past three years, Regan Smith has won 11 international medals in backstroke, reaching the podium at every opportunity. Three of those medals were gold, all from the Short Course World Championships last December, and the...

6 Ways to Swim Tall: Advice for the Vertically Challenged By Delaney Lanker My whole swimming career people have been telling me to swim tall. Standing at 5'0", I wouldn’t really consider myself “tall.” I don’t fit the typical swimmer mold, but I’m okay with that. While my height might be a disadvan...