2025 World Swimming Championships: How to watch, schedule, preview
The meet features 2024 Olympic headliners Leon Marchand of France (four individual golds in Paris), Summer McIntosh of Canada (three individual golds) and American Katie Ledecky (female swimming record nine career Olympic golds).
Ledecky's 26 career world championships medals are third in history (Michael Phelps won 33 and Ryan Lochte earned 27) and 21 world titles are second in history (Phelps took 26).
Another possible standout is American Gretchen Walsh, who has the world's top times this year in the 50m and 100m butterflies and the 50m freestyle. Walsh is expected to swim in three relays that could take gold, too.
The most anticipated single race of worlds comes Aug. 2 — the women's 800m free, a likely showdown between Ledecky and McIntosh.
Ledecky can become the first swimmer to win a seventh world title in the same event. McIntosh has added that event to her program, having swum the third-fastest time in history in June (95 hundredths off Ledecky's world record).
McIntosh is entered in five total individual events and ranks No. 1 in the world this year in four of them. If she wins those four, plus dethrones Ledecky in the 800m free, she will become the second swimmer after Phelps to win five individual golds at a single worlds.
Marchand is entered in the same four events he won at the Paris Games: the 200m and 400m individual medleys, 200m breaststroke and 200m butterfly.
He can become the fourth man to win four individual golds at a single worlds after Phelps (2003, 2007 (5)), Ryan Lochte (2011) and Caeleb Dressel (2019). Ledecky is the only woman to achieve the feat.
World Swimming Championships Broadcast Schedule
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