A famous swimmer asked us on Wednesday for an analysis of ‘Olympic swimming medalists who aren’t Americans, but trained in America.’
We can do that!
There were 219 actual medals (not medals table medals) given out for pool swimming at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games to 125 athletes.
First Data Point: 69 of those medals (32%) were awarded to 34 American athletes (25%).
Second Data Point: 14 of those medals (6%) were awarded to 6 international athletes who train in America (5%).
Third Data Point: None of those were relay medals, as far as we can tell. This was the one that I found to be most-fascinating. The countries that dominated the relay events (Australia, China, and Italy) are generally countries that send among the fewest swimmers to the American NCAA system, either because they have well-developed home training systems, and/or because the countries disincentivize training abroad, as is the case with Italy.
There are two natural questions that derive from this data. One is whether American resources and expertise should be developing athletes from other countries, and two is ‘why are swimmers like Leon Marchand and Summer McIntosh able to come into our system and have more success than our athletes?’
The former question is a matter of personal opinion and politics. It also requires the context that while swimming is an ‘exporter’ of swimming expertise, they are an ‘importer’ of expertise in other sports – and that it’s hard to cut off one direction of that flow without impacting the other. In a world of professional athletics, as compared to patriotically-driven amateur athletics, restriction of international training of athletes would require a view of some bigger pictures.
There is also a bit of brinksmanship, as in this scenario, it becomes more likely for other countries to hire American swim coaches away into their countries, as we’ve seen with a coach like Mark Schubert traveling to coach in China.
In the latter category, the numbers are inflated a bit by the fact that the best male and best female swimmer at this meet both happen to be international swimmers who train in America. If you remove Leon Marchand and Summer McIntosh, the numbers aren’t that overwhelming.
But the cases of Marchand and McIntosh are the vital ones. The U.S. swim team still has the depth, but collectively, it seems like the U.S. collectively has lost the ability to find those couple of tenths to get to the top of the podium individually, to win the close races individually, and to take the gold medals.
So if America accepts that it cannot get rid of the foreign athletes training in the U.S., then America should be learning from these athletes, their developmental pathways, their talent, and trying to figure out how to get American swimmers back to the top of podiums.
There is also the special case of Ilya Kharun, who was raised in the U.S., thought he was eligible to represent the U.S., found out he wasn’t, and earlier this year became a U.S. citizen, formally.
America isn’t the only country that trains other countries’ Olympic swimmers, though it is by-far the leader in that category. Others that we identified are below. We looked pretty hard, but let us know in the comments if we missed any.
List of Non-American medalists who train primarily in America
| Men | Country | Training Base | Event | Medal |
| Hubert Kos | Hungary | Arizona State/Texas | 200 back | gold |
| Leon Marchand | France | Arizona State/Texas | 200 breast | gold |
| Leon Marchand | France | Arizona State/Texas | 200 fly | gold |
| Leon Marchand | France | Arizona State/Texas | 200 IM | gold |
| Leon Marchand | France | Arizona State/Texas | 400 IM | gold |
| Leon Marchand | France | Arizona State/Texas | 400 medley relay | bronze |
| Josh Liendo | Canada | Florida | 100 fly | silver |
| Ilya Kharun | Canada | Arizona State | 100 fly | bronze |
| Ilya Kharun | Canada | Arizona State | 200 fly | bronze |
| Women | Country | Training Base | Event | Medal |
| Mona McSharry | Ireland | Tennessee | 100 breast | bronze |
| Summer McIntosh | Canada | Sarasota Sharks | 200 fly | gold |
| Summer McIntosh | Canada | Sarasota Sharks | 200 IM | gold |
| Summer McIntosh | Canada | Sarasota Sharks | 400 IM | gold |
| Summer McIntosh | Canada | Sarasota Sharks | 400 free | silver |
Formatted as a Medals Table
| Gold | Silver | Bronze | Total | |
| Foreign Athletes in America | 8 | 2 | 4 | 14 |
Athletes who train primarily outside of the country they represent (that isn’t America):
- Daniel Wiffen, Ireland (UK – Loughborough)
- Ben Proud, UK (Turkey – Gloria Sports Arena)
- Kylie Masse (Spain – Sant Cugat)
Athletes who take extended training camps in other countries to train under the coaches in those other countries:
- Kim Woo-min (Australia)
- Kristof Milak, maybe, depending on who you ask?
It’s interesting to see this broken down, however take another sport like figure skating and a high percentage of American and international skaters train in Canada. However those sport nations assist their athletes to find the best training to prepare them for all the international and Olympic competitions and they usually financially compensate the host training center of coaches, etc. So there are definitely other nations hosting Olympic medalists in their training facilities from across the globe and also American athlete’s outside of the U.S.
Also it’s definitely worth mentioning that the collegiate system is far more robust in the U.S. for certain sports and hence why there are athletes in swimming, track, etc. that attend University and train… Read more »
If it’s not free, then all are capital-driving
You forgot Hubert Kos
He’s the first name on the list.
How about non US coaches coaching USA athletes to medals? USWNT for example.
The article has missed Siobhan Haughey of Hong Kong. She went to University of Michigan and won 2 bronze medals in Paris (to go with 2 silver medals in Tokyo)
She did, but she was not training in the US in the leadup to the Paris Olympics, she was training in Hong Kong. This list was focused on swimmers who were primarily in the US in the leadup to these Olympics. Maybe we could do another sub-list for swimmers who went to college here and then went back home – the data can be parsed a lot of ways.
We are not sharing national defense secrets. I hope the best continue to come here and train, I hope we continue to import trainers from other countries . I wish American trainers every succes if they work overseas.
I cheerr on our US athletes and hope they win. But depriving other athletes opportunities is not the American way to succeed. May the best peson win!
Right
Taylor Ruck is similar to Kharun. She spent at least half of each year in Arizona growing up, and went to American schools.
Taylor, Sydney, Sophie, Ilya are in a different category than Leon, Josh, Summer. They are all American-born/raised with Canadian citizenship either via birth or parents. They were all living in America when they became good enough to make the Canadian team, vs the examples in this article where the swimmers were already making teams in their home countries and then chose to train in America.
Beyond politics, there’s the matter of legality. In the US, it’s illegal to discriminate based on nationality when making a contract—that would include club teams that may want to exclude foreign athletes and dual-citizens who choose to represent a different country internationally. Moreover, most of the training bases are public universities, so they are “the goverment,” and subject to the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution, which means they can’t discriminate based on nationality without a really good reason. The main purpose of intercollegiate athletics is intercollegiate competition, so the fact that they also compete in other events on behalf of other countries is unlikely to be a good enough reason under the Constitution.
So, this discussion about whether… Read more »