2024 Olympian Hunter Armstrong Won’t Compete at U.S. Nationals

2025 U.S. NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS

• Tuesday, June 3 – Saturday, June 7, 2025
• Indianapolis, Indiana
• Indiana University Natatorium
• LCM (50 meters)
• Meet Central
• World Championship Selection Criteria

US Olympian Hunter Armstrong will not be competing at the U.S. Nationals/World Champs Trials meet next week in Indianapolis. Armstrong has confirmed the news to SwimSwam. It comes just a couple weeks after he detailed a trying period after the Olympics last summer, wherein one of his major contracts fell through, and he contemplated retirement. As Armstrong stated in that IG post, he had anticipated the Fort Lauderdale Pro Swim Series at the beginning of May to be his final competition, however, he has made the decision to continue his competitive swimming career. Given that, since we won’t be seeing Armstrong at Nationals next week, perhaps our next chance to see him on a big stage could be the TYR Summer Championships in early August.

Armstrong is a 2-time Olympian for the U.S., having represented his country at both the Tokyo and Paris Olympics. He earned a gold medal in Tokyo for competing on the prelims men’s 4×100 medley relay. Last summer, Armstrong qualified for semifinals in the 100 back in Paris, but fell short of qualifying for the final. At last summer’s Olympic Trials, Armstrong finished 2nd with a 52.72. His career best is 51.98, which makes him 1 of only 7 men historically in the world to have gone under 52 seconds in the LCM 100 back.

Perhaps most notably, Armstrong was the World Record holder in the LCM 50 backstroke, having gone a 23.71 in the event at the 2022 International Team Trials in April of 2022. Since then, Russia’s Kliment Kolesnikov has broken the World Record with a 23.55, but Armstrong is still the 2nd-fastest swimmer in history in the event.

Notably, the absence of Armstrong means the both American Olympians in the men’s 100 backstroke from last summer are out of the picture for Nationals this summer. Ryan Murphy, arguably the greatest American men’s backstroker ever, announced he would be taking the summer off from competition.

While Armstrong is sitting out of the biggest meets of the year, he’s been actively racing this spring. At the Westmont Pro Swim Series in March, Armstrong clocked a 22.45 in the 50 free and 50.62 in the 100 free. He then went on to compete at the Fort Lauderdale Pro Series at the beginning of the month, where he went 22.57 in the 50 free and 24.20 in the 50 fly.