Editorial content for the 2023 World Aquatics Championships is sponsored by FINIS, a longtime partner of Swimming World and leading innovator of suits, goggles and equipment. Why United States Captured World Aquatics Trophy in Fukuoka (A Look at Scoring System Used) The top-performing team in the pool at the 2023 World Championships according to gold-medal count was Australia, with four relay gold medals and nine individual golds from the likes of Sam Short, Ariarne Titmus, Kaylee McKeown, Mollie O’Callaghan, Kyle Chalmers and Cameron McEvoy. Australia surely looked the part of the world’s top team. But at the conclusion of the meet, World Aquatics named the United States as its top team based on a scoring system that takes into account all top-16 individual results and top-eight relay swims. According to World Aquatics Competition Regulation 12.1.1.3.1, the Team Trophy’s points system gives 18 points for first place, 16 points for second place subtracting one down to 10 points for eighth place and then eight points down to one point for ninth through 16th. In relays, the point totals are 36, 32, 30, 28, 26, 24, 22 and 20. Based on that system, the United States finished first with 1082 points, with 460 men’s points and 560 women’s points, both tops among all countries. Australia was second at 804, finishing second among both genders as well (311 men’s, 425 women’s) and then there was a big gap back to China in third place with 574. Great Britain was fourth (439) and Canada fifth (410), with host Japan sixth (339), France and Italy tied for seventh (327), the Netherlands ninth (262) and Germany 10th (225). The full Team Trophy scoring is available here. Meanwhile, the awards for top athletes are based on individual events only, giving five points for first place, three points for second place, two points for third place and one point for fourth place. Two points were given for each individual world record broken This meant that three-time gold medalists McKeown (Australia) and Leon Marchand (France) were named the top performers of the meet. Marchand was tied with China’s Qin Haiyang at 17 points, but his 400 IM world record was worth 1016 points while Qin’s 200 breaststroke mark netted him 1011.
That makes sense if this was a Swimming Trophy were USA despite not winning many golds did have the most overall medal. But it doesn’t make any sense if it is the overall championships trophy. Over all the disciplines included in the Championships, China was clealy dominant, dwarfing both Australia and USA.
Anyway, who cares. The only team sport in those championships was water polo.