Without Full Athlete Buy-In, Short Course Worlds Remain a Secondary Championship
Two months after breaking the world record in the short course 100 backstroke, Coleman Stewart was left off the U.S. team for December’s Short Course World Championships. Instead, the spots went to the top swimmers from this summer’s long course season who were interested in participating, Hunter Armstrong and Shaine Casas. With that selection process, the message was clearly sent that USA Swimming as an organization did not care about Short Course Worlds.
Among the world’s top swimmers, coaches and decision-makers, that feeling is far from an outlier. Need proof? Many of the world’s best swimmers have rarely attended or never attended the meet, even in their prime. Michael Phelps went to one Short Course Worlds, when it was held on U.S. soil in Indianapolis in 2004, and never again before his career wrapped up in 2016.
Adam Peaty has competed consistently in the ISL (except for 2021), but he has not attended Short Course Worlds since 2014 — Photo Courtesy: Mine Kasapoglu / ISL
Stars like Adam Peaty, Missy Franklin and Nathan Adrian are among those with just a single trip to Short Course Worlds throughout their amazing careers, and for each one, that appearance came before they debuted (and starred) at a long course World Championships or Olympics. Katie Ledecky, Emma McKeon and Cate Campbell have never been to a Short Course Worlds.
Plenty of top swimmers do participate in the meet regularly, but for many, it’s an afterthought of an event. That’s particularly true when it is held just months after an Olympics, as is the case this year. In 2016, the gold medalist in only one individual men’s event out of 13 at the Rio Olympics showed up to Short Course Worlds (Gregorio Paltrinieri), and the winner of only five women’s events chose to attend (representing just three swimmers).
So it’s a great chance to win world titles, a great chance for young swimmers to gain some valuable international experience and even a great chance for veterans to race against good competition and even make some money. But a true world championship? Hardly.
Simply, a lot of the world’s best swimmers have never embraced short course — or at least short course meters. Most top Americans and some internationals compete in short course yards during their college careers, but that format carries no significance outside the United States.
Racing in the 25-meter tank is a wholly different experience than the Olympic-sized pool, so in one sense, it’s a shame that relatively few swimmers care about that format. We would love to find out who is really the best in a format where turns and details reign supreme and overall aerobic fitness is slightly deprioritized. But on the other hand, that’s the reality of the swimming world, today and always: the Olympics reign supreme, so 50-meter racing will always be the priority.
Short course racing? A top priority and even a key source of income for some. For many others, it’s an entire racing period to ignore.
The advent of the International Swimming League (ISL) has brought short course meters racing back into the spotlight, at least to an extent, as even swimmers who had avoided Short Course Worlds jumped at the chance to compete in a true professional league. But even into the third season of the ISL, plenty of short course meters world records and historical top times lists are weak compared to the long course counterparts.
Now, the ISL is happening in the same period as the Short Course World Championships for the first time, with the 2021 meet scheduled for December 15-20 in Abu Dhabi. Meanwhile, the ISL playoffs begin just days after the European Short Course Championships in Kazan. Not to mention that we’re only three months removed from the Olympic Games, a championship meet into which swimmers put their all as they rebounded from the COVID-19 pandemic. So this leaves plenty of swimmers to choose between events, if they even want to race at all right now in this post-Olympics period.
Coming off her historic seven-medal performance at the Tokyo Olympics, it is unclear if Emma McKeon will compete at Short Course Worlds — Photo Courtesy: Giorgio Scala / Deepbluemedia / Insidefoto
Caeleb Dressel, Lilly King and Ryan Murphy will be in the ISL playoffs, but neither is on the U.S. roster for Short Course Worlds. That was a choice these swimmers made, not a flaw in the selection procedures. Helping their teams in the ISL playoffs was a priority, but they deemed the pursuit of short course world titles not worth the time and effort.
Meanwhile, Australia has already announced it will not send a full representative team due to the pandemic. Maybe stars like McKeon, Kyle Chalmers and Madi Wilson decide to go following impressive ISL and World Cup campaigns, but rest assured that this would not be a total phone-in if Short Course Worlds carried more prestige.
But in the grand scheme of swimming, the meet is insignificant. And until the world’s best swimmers — all of the world’s best swimmers — show that they really care about short course and the Short Course World Championships, those titles and medals will always be worth far less than their long course cousins.
The more important issue is why US races for college and national titles are not held in 25 meter pools but rather in 25 yard ones.
They swim 25 yards because most every school pool is built that way. You would have to demolish over 90% of the pools to be able to swim 25 meters, and even the 50 meter pools are 25 yards wide. It is just easier to do nothing to change that dynamic, and a lot cheaper too in this world of shrinking athletic budgets..
Reduce underwaters to 10m in SCM and then it might be more interesting.