Swimming Olympism and Professionalism Again Stand at Odds with Stroke 50 Selections

One of the first editorials I ever wrote about swimming surrounded the non-Olympic stroke 50s and why the US seems to downplay those events.

I can’t find that editorial, but the hypotheses surrounded two ideas. The first, most obvious one, is the dogmatic focus on the Olympic Games. Stroke 50s aren’t in the Olympics, and USA Swimming’s bread is buttered primarily by the Olympics.

The other had to do with the way Americans coached/trained at the time: volume was king, and volume doesn’t always create the best 50 swimmers. Great stroke 50s also require a lot of hyper-technical work, and not every coach has that educational background nor the ability to train in the kind of small groups that requires. If you’ve got 30 swimmers in the pool, it’s a lot easier to give them all 10k workouts and say “go” than to take the time to hone in on the fine technical details that make-or-break a stroke 50.

The debate over stroke 50s came to a head this weekend when Michael Andrew, in spite of winning the 50 fly at the US National Championships, was left off the team because of the World Aquatics-mandated 26-swimmer roster limit.

With World Championship medals in the stroke 50s worth hundreds-of-thousands of dollars, the debate overlaps a lot with the one surrounding choosing the best long course swimmers to represent the US at the World Short Course Championships, rather than the best short course swimming. It’s about driving USA Swimming forward toward the Olympics, even at the expense of athletes trying to shape out a professional career in non-Olympic events.

Andrew ranks 3rd in the world in the 50 fly so far this season globally, and would be a favorite for a medal next month in Fukuoka.

For a long time, we’ve all sort of taken for granted that the full priority of the USA Swimming Selection Procedures would be met. That’s because for the longest time, it was. But after the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, where Ryan Held was left off the roster in spite of finishing 6th in the 100 free – a spot that usually goes.

The change on the men’s side seems to be the lack of the kind of anchors who can take up multiple event spots and multiple relay spots – the Michael Phelpses or Ryan Lochtes of generations past. The women’s side still has that with Katie Ledecky and Regan Smith, for example, which is why they haven’t been running into these cap issues as strongly.

But as specialization becomes more prevalent, these limits could become a bigger issue.

That leaves USA Swimming with a choice to make, and forces them to not look at priority orders as a hypothetical, but rather a reality.

For the 2022 World Aquatics Championships, the winners of the stroke 50s from US Trials were the 3rd priority – ahead of the 5th and 6th place finishers in the 100 and 200 free (often, but not always, relay only swimmers).

When selection procedures were released for 2023, however, that was flipped, and those 5th and 6th place finishers were put ahead of the stroke 50s in the priority queue. That is why Michael Andrew, and not Henry McFadden, was left off.

To be clear, in spite of what is circulating on social media, this was not done in secret, and it was not done “a few weeks ago.” There was a revised version of the selection procedures earlier this year, but they were not a secret. The changes did not impact the priority selection order for the 2023 World Aquatics Championships, but instead dealt with integrating the priority of the U23 European Championships, tie breakers, and a few other minor administrative changes.

The selection priority for the 2023 World Championships always had the stroke 50s last.

While the membership of USA Swimming seems to be starting to warm up to the value of the stroke 50s at the senior level, the administration of the organization is making their stand clear. USA Swimming tends to be heavily influenced by the more traditional voices of the sport, and that seems to be the case again here.

And while there is a lot of money on the line for athletes not chosen ($20,000 for Worlds gold medals, plus the residual commercial benefits of being a World Champion), there is something on the line for USA Swimming too: if the US doesn’t win the medals table at the World Championships, that will hurt the brand. I have absolutely no idea how to quantify the commercial impact of that, but stroke 50 medals count toward those totals.

Will the US’ medal total change if they leave, say, a 6th place finisher in the 200 free home? Almost definitely not. The US can cruise to an 8th place finish in the 800 free relay in prelims without any issue.

But the better question maybe surrounds whether that 6th place position in the 100 and 200 free impacts Olympic outcomes. We’ve asked one of our stable of stat gurus, Daniel Takata, to research 6th place finishers in the 100 and 200 free from pre-Olympic World Championship meets and see what their Olympic Trials/Olympic outcomes were a year later.

But in the meantime, this all feeds into a bigger narrative of what we, collectively as a sport, want swimming to be. Do we want it to be a once every four year sport, where the Olympics are the alpha and omega, and where membership and the fanbase erodes in between? Or do we want it to become more fragmented, where we on the industrial side have the opportunity (and maybe the obligation) to grind every year to fill those valleys?

It’s a question that is increasingly becoming the conversation of the sport. Most swimming people, when asked in a vacuum, will say they want the latter, they want a sport where athletes can make money all four years, afford to stay in the sport longer, and where membership numbers don’t drop intra-Olympiad. But the actions continue to be all about chasing that OLY title.