A well-known swimmer requested us on Wednesday for an evaluation of ‘Olympic swimming medalists who aren’t Individuals, however educated in America.’
We will do this!
There have been 219 precise medals (not medals desk medals) given out for pool swimming on the Paris 2024 Olympic Video games to 125 athletes.
First Information Level: 69 of these medals (32%) had been awarded to 34 American athletes (25%).
Second Information Level: 14 of these medals (6%) had been awarded to six worldwide athletes who prepare in America (5%).
Third Information Level: None of these had been relay medals, so far as we will inform. This was the one which I discovered to be most-fascinating. The international locations that dominated the relay occasions (Australia, China, and Italy) are usually international locations that ship among the many fewest swimmers to the American NCAA system, both as a result of they’ve well-developed house coaching methods, and/or as a result of the international locations disincentivize coaching overseas, as is the case with Italy.
There are two pure questions that derive from this information. One is whether or not American assets and experience must be growing athletes from different international locations, and two is ‘why are swimmers like Leon Marchand and Summer season McIntosh in a position to come into our system and have extra success than our athletes?’
The previous query is a matter of private opinion and politics. It additionally requires the context that whereas swimming is an ‘exporter’ of swimming experience, they’re an ‘importer’ of experience in different sports activities – and that it’s laborious to chop off one route of that stream with out impacting the opposite. In a world {of professional} athletics, as in comparison with patriotically-driven novice athletics, restriction of worldwide coaching of athletes would require a view of some greater footage.
There’s additionally a little bit of brinksmanship, as on this state of affairs, it turns into extra seemingly for different international locations to rent American swim coaches away into their international locations, as we’ve seen with a coach like Mark Schubert touring to educate in China.
Within the latter class, the numbers are inflated a bit by the truth that the perfect male and finest feminine swimmer at this meet each occur to be worldwide swimmers who prepare in America. When you take away Leon Marchand and Summer season McIntosh, the numbers aren’t that overwhelming.
However the instances of Marchand and McIntosh are the very important ones. The U.S. swim group nonetheless has the depth, however collectively, it looks as if the U.S. collectively has misplaced the flexibility to seek out these couple of tenths to get to the highest of the rostrum individually, to win the shut races individually, and to take the gold medals.
So if America accepts that it can not get rid of the overseas athletes coaching within the U.S., then America must be studying from these athletes, their developmental pathways, their expertise, and attempting to determine the right way to get American swimmers again to the highest of podiums.
There’s additionally the particular case of Ilya Kharun, who was raised within the U.S., thought he was eligible to characterize the U.S., discovered he wasn’t, and earlier this yr turned a U.S. citizen, formally.
America isn’t the one nation that trains different international locations’ Olympic swimmers, although it’s by-far the chief in that class. Others that we recognized are beneath. We seemed fairly laborious, however tell us within the feedback if we missed any.
Listing of Non-American medalists who prepare primarily in America
Formatted as a Medals Desk
| Gold | Silver | Bronze | Whole | |
| International Athletes in America | 8 | 2 | 4 | 14 |
Athletes who prepare primarily outdoors of the nation they characterize (that isn’t America):
Athletes who take prolonged coaching camps in different international locations to coach below the coaches in these different international locations:
