Male Breakout Swimmer of the Year: Luke Hobson Grew From NCAA Champ to Olympic Medalist to World-Record Holder
By the end of the spring, there was no doubting Luke Hobson’s credentials in the short-course pool.
In three years, he’d become the best distance swimmer in the history of the University of Texas, twice an NCAA champion in the 200 freestyle, once in the 500 free, a school-record holder in both.
The only question was whether Hobson could turn his immense NCAA promise into international success in time for an Olympic year.
The answer would be a resounding yes. In a year where so many of his fellow American male swimmers came up small on the international stage, Hobson’s emergence was a rare bright spot for the program.
Hobson’s journey to success in 2024 began with disappointment in 2023. The Reno native left the Fukuoka World Championships with a solitary silver medal, in the 800 free relay, stung that it wasn’t gold. He led off that relay in 1:46.00, slower than any of his three swims in the 200 free. The fastest of those was delivered in the semifinals, where he entered finals in second position. He finished fifth in the final, six-tenths of a second off the podium.
It set the stage for redemption in 2024. First came the push to an extra Worlds in Doha in February, yielding 200 free bronze in 1:45.26. That was the same time with which he led off the bronze-winning 800 free relay.
Hobson entered the Olympic Trials as the man to beat in the 200 free. Unlike many other favorites, he backed it up, winning the event to join a sextet of sub-1:45 swimmers globally at the time. In a scintillating Olympic final in Paris, Hobson was in a leading pack of four clustered within .15 seconds. He got his hand to the wall third in 1:44.79, .07 behind the winning time of David Popovici, for a historic medal, just the second for an American man in the event in the last four Games. Hobson added silver in the 800 free relay.
The World Short-Course Championships seems like a perfect capstone on his year, Hobson possessing the ideal combination of walls and stroke smoothness to dominate the distance. That’s what transpired in Budapest: Three gold medals, four world records (two individual). He helped the U.S. win the 400 free and 800 free relays. In the latter, he took down Paul Biedermann’s 15-year-old world record off the front, then lowered it further to 1:38.61 to win the 200 free world title by nearly two seconds.
“It was a great year,” Hobson said in Budapest. “It was super exciting. I feel like I am in a really great spot right now. 2024 was a really good year for me, and I am excited and looking forward to next year in Singapore and of course I am focused on Los Angeles 2028. It feels amazing to be one of the guys that others swimmers look up to because that is what I was doing for many years in my career. I am going to work as hard as I can and see if I can continue to get better.”