The United States grabbed a pair of gold medals on Saturday at the 2021 FINA World Short Course Swimming Championships, and in the process took their first lead in the medals table.
The US now has 4 gold, 4 silver, and 8 bronze medals, surpassing Canada, which added 1 silver to its haul on Saturday to sit in 2nd place, based on the traditional gold-silver-bronze ranking.
At the midway point of the meet, the Americans are well behind their gold medal pace from 2018, where they had 17 – well ahead of second-place Russia. Through day 3 of the 2018 championship, the U.S. had 9 gold, 6 silver, and 2 bronze medals, or 17 total medals. So while the overall medal count is similar to what it was in the last edition at this point, the makeup of those medals is dramatically different.
That was boosted, though, by wins on Saturday in both the men’s 200 breaststroke (Nic Fink) and women’s 200 back (Rhyan White), which offset an unexpected miss in other spots: like Tom Shields in the 100 fly.
Canada, meanwhile, continues a historic run at this meet: in 2018, they didn’t score a single medal, and are on track for their best-ever showing at this meet.
Italy, meanwhile, racked up 3 new medals on Saturday, and now have the second-most total medals. That includes a gold from Matteo Rivolta in the 100 fly ahead of Chad le Clos of South Africa and Andrei Minakov of Russia.
Competition Medal Table
| Country | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Total |
| USA | 4 | 4 | 8 | 16 |
| Canada | 3 | 3 | 0 | 6 |
| Italy | 2 | 3 | 3 | 8 |
| Sweden | 2 | 1 | 2 | 5 |
| People’s Republic of China | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Hong Kong, China | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Russian Swimming Federation | 1 | 3 | 2 | 6 |
| Netherlands | 1 | 2 | 1 | 4 |
| Austria | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Belarus | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Israel | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Japan | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Republic of Korea | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Lithuania | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| South Africa | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Switzerland | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Ireland | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Bosnia and Herzegovina | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Romania | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
Canada won 8 medals when the meet was hosted in Windsor in 2016…
Canada won 2 gold, 3 sliver, and 3 bronze when they hosted in 2016