Perhaps Ryan Lochte’s 8 medals at the 2012 World Short Course Championships in Istanbul, Turkey won’t carry the same weight as the 8 that rival Michael Phelps won at the Olympics in 2008.
It is still a history-making performance for the swimmer, as this is the most medals that have ever been won at a Short Course World Championship, which earned Lochte the FINA Trophy for the best male swimmer of the meet for the 4th consecutive event – an impressive feat in its own right that shows his dedication to showing up and racing at big meets.
Altogether, Lochte won 6 golds, 1 silver, and 1 bronze medal.
The winner of the women’s FINA Trophy was Hungarian Katinka Hosszu, reaping the final rewards from a long, hard-fought season of racing, with 2 golds, 2 silvers, a bronze and a pair of Meet Records to go with them.
As for the overall national medal counts, the Americans once again led the way with 27 medals, including 11 golds. This was somewhat of a predictable result, given the relative strength and depth of the American team as compared to the other swimming superpowers like China and Australia, who brought bare-bones squads.
The Danish team are the ones who really impressed, however. Including their first two ever World Championship relay medals (gold in the women’s 400 medley, bronze in the women’s 400 free), they took 10 total medals (including 3 golds). The Danes had their best-ever performance at a global championship meet (Worlds/Olympics), speaking to the overall direction of the program. They are on a precipice, however, as their National Team coach, and the coach of a good portion of their National Team, Paulus Wildeboer is headed to Australia.
Many of their swimmers are now looking overseas for new training grounds, which one would hope won’t stifle the program’s development.
Meanwhile, his new home country had arguably their most disappointing global championship ever. They usually turn out strong teams for this meet, and have even won the medal table over the Americans in the past. This year, they walked away with only 8 medals and only a single gold. Internally, that will be written off to the country sending a smallish squad to the meet, however globally this will be another chip taken out of the sterling, historic reputation of the Aussie program.
| Rank | Nation | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  United States |
11 | 8 | 8 | 27 |
| 2 |  China |
3 | 5 | 3 | 11 |
| 3 |  Hungary |
3 | 4 | 3 | 10 |
| 4 |  Denmark |
3 | 2 | 5 | 10 |
| 5 |  Russia |
2 | 3 | 4 | 9 |
| 6 |  Italy |
2 | 3 | 0 | 5 |
| 7 |  Germany |
2 | 1 | 1 | 4 |
 Japan |
2 | 1 | 1 | 4 | |
| 9 |  Lithuania |
2 | 1 | 0 | 3 |
| 10 |  Australia |
1 | 4 | 3 | 8 |
| 11 |  Great Britain |
1 | 2 | 3 | 6 |
| 12 |  South Africa |
1 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| 13 |  Spain |
1 | 0 | 2 | 3 |
| 14 |  Brazil |
1 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
 New Zealand |
1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | |
 Poland |
1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | |
| 17 |  Belarus |
1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
 Norway |
1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | |
 Ukraine |
1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | |
| 20 |  Jamaica |
0 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
 Slovenia |
0 | 2 | 0 | 2 | |
| 22 |  France |
0 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| 23 |  Czech Republic |
0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
 Faroe Islands |
0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | |
 Trinidad and Tobago |
0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | |
| Total | 40 | 40 | 40 | 120 | |
And Ricky Berens , Peter Vanderkaay , will they still be competing as well in the future ???
For me Ryan had a fantastic meet , specially with his relay performances on Freestyle . Probably the second most medalled swimmer of all time with M Phelps . Bravo !!!
Important to mention the very good performances of Olivia Smoliga , Ryan Murphy , Kevin Cordes , Thomas Shields , Conor Dwyer , Laura Sogar , Lia neal and Megan Romano . The future of Usa swimming is allready there as many Olympians may retire this year or next year . Nobody knows yet ……
To me the future of USA swimming lies in the 16-18 year olds. Obviously that includes the likes of Murphy, Cordes, Neal and Smoliga, but there were also a number of really impressive swims this past month in that age range that bode well for 2016. Still need to convert SCY swimming to LCM, but very exciting prospects.
Can anyone tell me if Ryan Lochte has given up the 400 IM forever? It would be logical after London.
Can anyone tell me if Katie Hoff, Brendan Hansen, Rebecca Soni and Kate Ziegler continue their careers? We haven’t seen them in a meet since the olympic games. I believe Brendan Hansen has officially retired from swimming but I’m not sure and for the others I don’t know.
I have forgotten Dana Vollmer, Natalie Coughlin, Eric Shanteau and Peter Vanderkaay. I also don’t know if they continue. It would be interesting if Braden the machine could inform us.
Haven’t seen anything official from any of them. Many of the Americans who plan retirement won’t publicly announce so right away for two reasons:
1) To preserve their post-Olympic marketability, squeeze a few extra dollars out of it
2) To make sure they’re really done
I saw an interview with Coughlin somewhere; she’s still training. She’s swimming regularly, but also doing a lot of running and other cross-training. She hasn’t decided on which meets she’s swimming except she’ll be at Trials for Worlds for sure.
Yeah it’s short course, a different animal, but honestly if you take the record number of medals, the two world records, and the fact that it’s a post-Olympic year, that’s damn impressive by Lochte. He’s a workhorse performer and this is another notch on his belt building his legacy meet by meet… perhaps toward a legacy of being the 2nd best swimmer ever??