It wouldn’t be a major international swim meet in Asia without reports of American swimmers being hit with food poisoning or other illnesses. Go ahead and rewind that storyline for the World Aquatics Championships that begin in Singapore on Saturday.
Several USA Swimming members were dealing with stomach bugs during training camp in Thailand, sources confirmed to Sports Illustrated. A handful of athletes had to stay behind in Phuket when most of the team traveled to Singapore earlier this week, but all American competitors were present and accounted for at their headquarters by Thursday.
This is what tends to come with having so many major meets on foreign soil, particularly in Asia. Previous world championships since 2011 have been held in China, South Korea and Japan, with the 2008 Olympic Games in China and the ’21 Summer Games in Japan.
We’ll see whether this star-spangled sickness is a major issue or just a hiccup that is forgotten by the time competition starts. An American team that is fully healthy should look a lot like the squad that encountered mixed results at the Paris Olympics last year—powerful on the women’s side and vulnerable on the men’s side. It could be a mixed bag again.
Seventeen of the 22 women’s team members have Olympic experience, including 10 multi-time Olympians. Three 28-year-olds rank among the most-decorated swimmers in the history of the sport: distance freestyler Katie Ledecky, sprinter Simone Manuel and breaststroker Lilly King. (This will be King’s last competition before retiring.) They have combined to win 14 Olympic gold medals, 10 silver and three bronze.
Then there is a core of multitalented swimmers in their early 20s who own a fistful of Olympic hardware: Kate Douglass, Torri Huske, Gretchen Walsh and Regan Smith should be on the medal podium in Singapore often.
“On the women’s side there aren’t too many new faces,” Ledecky said. “We have a very experienced group, and that’s great.”
Their competition will largely come from the same places it did in Paris:
- Canadian teenage monster Summer McIntosh is favored to win four events, and will challenge Ledecky in the race where she has been unbeatable for 13 years: the 800 freestyle. McIntosh is the world-record holder in the 400 freestyle and both the 200 and 400 IMs, swam the second-fastest 200 butterfly in history in June and is now within a second of Ledecky’s world record in the 800 free.
- Australia has the favorite in the backstroke events in Kaylee McKeown, plus plenty of freestyle depth that will be tough in relays and individual events. Even with 200 and 400 star Ariarne Titmus not competing in Singapore, the Aussies never run out of freestylers.
- China remains a wild card.
On the men’s side, the wives of backstroke stalwart Ryan Murphy, breaststroker Nic Fink and sprinter Caeleb Dressel all recently had babies. None of the swimmers competed in U.S. nationals and all three are not on the roster, with their futures in the sport unclear. This is the first time since 2013 that the Americans have had none of those three on their top international team.
The only marquee American who owns individual Olympic gold medals is distance ace Bobby Finke. He memorably saved the U.S. from embarrassment in Tokyo by winning the 1,500 freestyle, preventing the first American men’s individual event shutout in swimming since 1900.
The only other multi-time Olympian on the U.S. men’s roster comes with an asterisk attached: Sprinter Santo Condorelli has competed in the Olympics for Canada and Italy, where he had citizenship, and now has made his first American international team at age 30.
The younger generation that is being counted on to step up includes sprinter Jack Alexy, 22, who flashed his promise in Paris last year; backstroker Jack Aikins, 22, who took over from Murphy in the 100 and 200 after finishing an agonizing third in both those events at 2024 Olympic Trials; and breakout breaststroker Campbell McKean, who came out of relative obscurity at age 18.
Beyond a lack of experience, the other problem facing the U.S. men is the presence of established international stars in many events. Paris hero Leon Marchand of France is the prohibitive favorite in both the 200 and 400 IMs, but is skipping the 200 breaststroke and butterfly, which opens up some opportunities. While Marchand won't swim as heavy a program as he has previously, he remains the most recognizable male swimmer in the world— and he’s being compensated for it. On Friday, Nike announced that it has added Marchand to its roster of athletes and featured him in an ad campaign with fellow French sports superstars Kylian Mbappé and Victor Wembenyama. China’s Qin Haiyang could sweep all three breaststroke events. Freestylers Pan Zhanle of China and David Popovici of Romania will be difficult to keep off the top of the podium in multiple events.
This is the first major international competition with USA Swimming under new management, most notably Greg Meehan as the national team managing director. Meehan came to the national team from a massively successful tenure as the women’s coach at Stanford, and his hire represents a pivot back to coaching expertise in the managing director role instead of an administrator.
But Meehan has been on the job less than four months, not enough time to make a significant impact on the overall state of USA Swimming. His task is to ramp the U.S. back up by 2028, when the Olympics are held on American soil (and in American water). This is merely the first aquatic mile marker in the journey toward Los Angeles.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as USA Swimming Seeks to Overcome Stomach Bug, Fierce Competition at 2025 World Championships.