Swimming's world championships have arrived, with a ‘race of the century'

New York Times

3 days ago

One year to the day after the 2024 Olympic swimming competition began in Paris, the first major international competition of the 2028 Olympic cycle is set to begin.
The swimming program at the 2025 World Aquatics Championships starts Sunday (Saturday night Eastern time) in Singapore as Katie Ledecky, Summer McIntosh, Léon Marchand and more stars from the Paris Games kick off their runs to Los Angeles.
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The year after a Games is typically one of transition. Some athletes are taking time off after the Olympic grind. Some have retired. Some new faces are emerging, and some familiar ones are plowing ahead.
'It's going to be a unique world championships, because you don't know what you're going to get,' longtime NBC swimming analyst Rowdy Gaines said by phone from Singapore. 'You know, in two years, we will kind of know what's gonna happen, but this is always a strange one, the one after the Games.'
The rivalry between McIntosh, the 18-year-old rising Canadian who won three golds and a silver in Paris, and Ledecky, the 28-year-old American with more swimming medals than any woman in history, will be one of the top storylines over the next week. As will Marchand's pursuit of more hardware. The 23-year-old French star won four golds in his home Olympics to stamp his place as the new force of men's swimming.
Here's a look at what to keep your eyes on over the next week in Singapore.
The first medal event on Sunday is the women's 400-meter freestyle, and it's expected to be a showdown between the best women's swimmer of all time and the best right now.
Ledecky won gold in the 400 at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, then took silver in Tokyo in 2021 (behind Australian rival Ariarne Titmus) and bronze in Paris (behind Titmus and McIntosh). McIntosh has the clear edge in the event now, having just set the world record last month at the Canadian trials — one of three she set in five days there — in a time of 3:54.18. Ledecky's best time this season is more than two seconds slower, but that time was good enough to beat McIntosh in their last meeting in the event, in May at a Pro Series meet in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
'It's always a great race when we're next to each other,' Ledecky said of McIntosh after that one.
Near the end of next week's meet, Ledecky and McIntosh are scheduled to clash again in the 800-meter freestyle in one of the most anticipated events of the world championships.
'The women's 800 is the race of the meet,' said Gaines, the gold medalist in the men's 100-meter freestyle in 1984, 'and, for that matter, at least from a world championships standpoint, the race of the century.'
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In May, Ledecky broke her 9-year-old world record in the 800 at the Fort Lauderdale event, finishing in 8:04.12 to best her previous mark by 0.69 seconds. It was a loud message to McIntosh, who in February, when they met at the Southern Zone Sectional Championships, handed Ledecky her first defeat in the event since 2010.
But McIntosh hasn't raced the 800 much in international competition and skipped it in Paris as well. Ledecky edged Titmus — who is skipping worlds this year to take time off after the Olympics — there for gold.
'Sometimes you build up races, and they don't play out,' Gaines said. 'But this one, I think, it's going to come down, after eight minutes, to within a half a second.'
McIntosh is scheduled for five individual events in Singapore — the 200- and 400-meter individual medleys (IM) and the 200 butterfly, along with the two freestyle races. She'll be the gold-medal favorite in four events after setting the world record in both IMs at Canadian trials and owning the fastest time of the year, by more than two seconds, in the 200 fly.
Ledecky also has the 1,500-meter freestyle on her program. It's one of the surest things in sports — she owns the 23 fastest times ever in the event, hasn't lost at that distance since she was 13 years old, and the closest anyone else has come to her top time this year is 15 seconds.
The Frenchman was the breakout star of his home Olympics, winning gold in his four events, and is expected to compete in just the 200-meter individual medley and the 400-meter IM. That could be bad news for Ryan Lochte.
Lochte, the former American swimming star, still holds the world record in the 200-meter IM (1:54.00) that he set at the 2011 world championships in Shanghai. But with Marchand dropping his two other signature events — the 200 breaststroke and the 200 butterfly — to focus on the IMs, he might have enough to swipe the 14-year-old record away. Marchand, the two-time defending world champion in both medleys (excluding the 2024 edition that he skipped), nearly got the record at the Olympics, finishing in 1:54.06.
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'Sooner or later, you get a feeling that he's gonna be the first one to do it, that's for sure,' Gaines said of Marchand breaking the 14-year-old record. 'Nobody else is gonna do it until Léon does it.'
His performance in Paris put Marchand into elite company. The list of men's swimmers with at least four individual Olympic golds in a single Games is Michael Phelps (twice), Mark Spitz and Marchand.
'He's certainly the greatest since (Phelps),' Gaines said of Marchand, who works with Phelps' former coach, Bob Bowman. 'He's not in that category yet, but he's the greatest since Michael dominated, that's for sure.'
American Gretchen Walsh entered the Paris Olympics looking to shed a reputation as a 'bathtub swimmer' — referring to her prowess in the 25-meter, short-course pools that place more emphasis on turns and swimming underwater as opposed to the longer, 50-meter pools used for Olympic competition. She then won three relay medals and an individual silver in the 100-meter butterfly.
But that silver was a bit of a surprise, given that Walsh had set the long-course world record in the event at the U.S. Olympic trials.
Now, the 22-year-old looks even better. She owns the fastest times this year in the 50-meter freestyle, 50-meter butterfly and 100-meter butterfly. That includes resetting her world record in the 100-meter butterfly twice on the same day (in the heats and then in the final) in Fort Lauderdale.
'I think going into Paris and being the world-record holder, she wanted that gold medal,' Gaines said. '… I don't think it's gnawing at her, certainly, but I think she's got something to prove — 'Hey, me breaking the world record was no fluke.''
Walsh has an aggressive schedule in Singapore, with four individual races and likely multiple relays. With the 50-meter butterfly among the adds to the Olympic program for 2028, Walsh is on track to be a major name to watch in Los Angeles.
'I'm very excited about (the addition of the 50-meter race to the Olympics),' Walsh said in Fort Lauderdale, 'and the opportunity to focus on this event more and emphasize it more in my lineup.'
The most decorated recent name in U.S. men's swimming, Caeleb Dressel, isn't in Singapore, and the Americans are coming off an Olympics with just a single individual men's gold — Bobby Finke in the 1,500-meter freestyle. It was their worst showing in that statistic since 1956, when there were just six individual men's events.
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But with three years to go until Los Angeles, there's time for young talent to develop. Luka Mijatovic is among those names. At 16, he's the youngest American male swimmer to compete at worlds since Phelps in 2001. At last month's U.S. nationals, he set national age-group records in the 200- and 400-meter freestyles — even besting the 17- and 18-year-old group record times.
'I think this guy is going to be a rocket ship in the future,' Gaines said, 'and especially in events that the U.S. has been pretty weak on.'
There's also Campbell McKean, 18, who won the 50- and 100-meter breaststroke events at nationals to qualify for worlds. His winning time of 58.96 seconds was the first time he'd broken the one-minute barrier — a significant jump in such a short race.
'The men will be great in L.A.,' Gaines predicted. 'Once L.A. rolls around, these young kids like Luca Urlando (23) and Thomas Heilman (18), and some of the people that most people have never heard of, you're gonna hear a lot about in the next three years.'
— Australia's Kaylee McKeown also has an excellent shot at multiple gold medals. She has been the backstroke queen the last two Olympics, winning gold in the 100- and 200-meter in both. Americans Regan Smith and Katharine Berkoff will be the top contenders to stop her.
Smith, in particular, will be anxious for another crack at it. She set the still-standing world record in the 100-meter at U.S. trials last year just before the Olympics, but swam the final in Paris a half-second slower, finishing second to McKeown. Five days later, she set an Olympic record in the 100 backstroke during the women's medley relay. Berkoff, meanwhile, has the world's best time in the 50-meter race this year.
— The men's 100-meter freestyle in Paris was blazing fast, with all eight swimmers in the final finishing under 48 seconds, the first time that had ever happened in the event. China's Pan Zhanle set the world record in that race, and he and Australia's Kyle Chalmers headline a field that will feature seven of the eight finalists from that Paris race.
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'(Pan) is going to be the favorite, without a doubt,' Gaines said of the race he conquered 41 years ago. 'But with (American Jack Alexy) and some of the other guys out there, (Romania's David) Popovici, it's going to be a great race.'
— If you're in the U.S., all sessions will be streaming on Peacock. The prelim sessions run every night Saturday through Aug. 2, starting at 10 p.m. ET. The morning medal-race sessions begin at 7 a.m. ET every day Sunday through Aug. 3.
(Top photo of Katie Ledecky competing in the 800-meter freestyle at the U.S. national championships in June: Sarah Stier / Getty Images)