U.S. Swimming Has Its Work Cut Out for Los Angeles 2028 Olympics

Team USA narrowly emerged with the most medals from the pool in Paris, but the future of the sport may lie in its competitors abroad.

Team USA's men's swimming only took home two gold medals from the Paris Games. / Erick W. Rasco/Sports Illustrated

PARIS — Your final medal table update from the swimming venue: United States eight gold medals, Australia seven gold medals, the United Nations of Bob Bowman seven gold medals.

O.K., that’s an unofficial tabulation. But the international impact of America’s best swim coach was a major factor in these Paris Olympics, and it hints at some of the challenges the U.S. will face in trying to reassert its dominance by 2028 when the Summer Games come to Los Angeles.

Bowman coached French superstar Léon Marchand to four gold medals and one bronze; Hungarian Hubert Kós to one gold; and American Regan Smith to two relay golds and three individual silver medals. His influence was everywhere, and that will continue and perhaps expand. Marchand and Kós are theoretically heading into their peak years in the sport, and more elite international talent could be headed to train with Bowman at Texas after this five-ring flex.

If Bowman stays committed to coaching Marchand—who could increase his program of individual events to a Phelps-ian five in the future—he figures to be unavailable to be the U.S. men’s Olympic coach again in 2028. And given his new employment at Texas, he also figures to be unavailable for a job that could, and should, come open with USA Swimming: national team manager.

The national team manager oversees the competitive aspect of USA Swimming, specifically athlete and coach development at the elite level. Although most swimmer development occurs at the local levels with hundreds of club and university teams, it all has to come together at the national level in a way that maximizes the available talent. And after two straight years of underwhelming results on the international stage, it’s time for some turnover.

Some in the sport already were calling for changes in USA Swimming leadership last year after being whipped by Australia at the world championships. Instead the group largely decided to stand pat, whistling past the graveyard to a degree, then walking into a Paris ambush. While the results were better in the Olympics than last year at worlds, Team USA’s eight golds were its fewest since 1988, and its 28 total medals the fewest since 2004.

Lindsay Mintenko has been the national team manager since 2017, maintaining an extremely low profile. She never made an appearance to discuss the makeup of the U.S. team at Olympic trials, and she left men’s head coach Anthony Nesty and women’s coach Todd DeSorbo to face the media by themselves here in Paris. If a change is made, Bowman would be an ideal candidate for the job—except for the above reasons why he wouldn’t take it. (It’s also worth noting that the contract of USA Swimming CEO Tim Hinchey is up for renewal in 2025.)

The need for domestic improvement is underscored by the fact that the world is brimming with prodigious talent. In addition to the usual strong swimming countries such as Australia, China (one way or another), Great Britain and Italy, others are rising. Look no further than Ireland, which won three swimming medals.

Prior to Paris, the Irish had medaled only once in Olympic swimming, in 1996. Michelle Smith claimed three gold medals and a bronze in a highly dubious performance that was further sullied by her subsequent four-year ban in ’98 for a tainted urine sample. Now here came the Irish, with distance freestyler Daniel Wiffen claiming a gold and a bronze and breastroker Mona McSharry (via the University of Tennessee) winning a bronze.

Irish backstroker Shane Ryan grew up in Philadelphia and swam collegiately at Penn State. He’s now near the end of his swimming career, and he’s seen the growth in commitment Ireland has made. The Irish aren’t the only ones.

Among the international contingent, many of the swimmers who racked up multiple medals in Paris were young enough to keep improving for Los Angeles. Marchand is 22, as is German gold medalist Lukas Märtens. Kós is 21. Chinese world-record holder Pan Zhanle turned 20 Sunday. Romanian gold medalist David Popovici is 19. On the women’s side, Canadian triple gold medalist Summer McIntosh is all of 17. Australian gold winner Mollie O’Callaghan is 20. 

Of that group, Marchand, McIntosh and Kós all spend most of the year working out in the United States. That includes long stints of altitude training at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. While foreign athletes have flocked to the U.S. for years to hone their craft, it might be unprecedented to have the two best swimmers in the world simultaneously training in America to beat Americans.

Marchand captivated the sport with four gold medals in front of his home crowd. / Erick W. Rasco/Sports Illustrated

Marchand and Kós aren’t the only international NCAA swimmers who won medals in Paris. At least five other current or former American collegians earned medals for other countries. You won’t find any U.S. swimmers or coaches who support excluding international athletes from coming to America to be their best—but it does increase the level of competition, and that shows no sign of abating. Swimcloud.com ranks college recruits based on their times, and the incoming class of 2024 shows the usual international influx: Top swimmers from Canada, England, France, Israel and so on will all be arriving on American campuses soon.

This comes at a time when overall opportunities in American college swimming are decreasing as the sport—particularly on the men’s side—could face significant cuts in coming years. With the settlement of the House v. NCAA and other court cases that will put billions of dollars in the pockets of athletes over the next decade, the budget crunch is real for many university athletic departments. They will largely target men’s Olympic sports—swimming very much included.

That is a compounding concern after a weak showing by the American men in Paris. They won just two gold medals, and just one in an individual event. It would be one thing to blame it on the presence of a generational talent like Marchand, but here’s the reality: If he didn’t exist, none of the four races he won would have defaulted to Americans. They would have been won by Japan (400 individual medley), Great Britain (200 IM), Australia (200 breastroke) and Hungary (200 butterfly). McIntosh, on the other hand, defeated American women in all three of her gold-medal races.

Despite all that, there are reasons for optimism as well. Even on the men’s side, where the team was caught in something of a generational gap—some of the older swimmers weren’t able to hit the high notes they did in the past, and many of the younger ones weren’t ready to be stars.

Fifteen of the 26 American men were competing in their first Olympics, compared to just seven out of 20 women. Of those 15, just two earned individual medals—Luke Hobson in the 200 freestyle and Carson Foster in the 200 IM. If what happened with the American women is any indicator, the experience gained by a young squad should be valuable over the next four years.

Three of the biggest U.S. female stars competed in Tokyo in 2021 and came back for much bigger roles in ’24. Kate Douglass went from a single bronze medal in Tokyo to four medals in Paris—two gold and two silver. Torri Huske similarly rose up with three golds and two silvers, and Smith had two golds and three silvers.

So there are challenges ahead, but also reasons for optimism. If the American swimmers get the best leadership, put in the work in the pool and gain inspiration at home the way the French team did here, expect a strong bounce-back in Los Angeles.