With our Top 100 For 2023 series wrapping up, it’s time to revisit the rankings as we look ahead to a fast year of swimming.
We’ve already seen some jaw-dropping performances this year, namely from Leon Marchand and Kate Douglass in the NCAA, which should set the tone for some big-time swims throughout the year on the international stage.
It was a three-horse race for the top men’s spot with the European trio of Marchand, Kristof Milak and David Popovici all coming off phenomenal years.
Ultimately, it was Milak who moved to #1 after ranking fifth last year, while Marchand and Popovici both made significant leaps up to #2 and #3, respectively.
See the full lists:
SWIMSWAM’S TOP 100 MEN FOR 2023
| Ranking | Swimmer | Country | 2022 Ranking | Change |
| 1 | Kristof Milak | Hungary | 5 | ↑4 |
| 2 | Leon Marchand | France | 48 | ↑46 |
| 3 | David Popovici | Romania | 20 | ↑17 |
| 4 | Thomas Ceccon | Italy | 31 | ↑27 |
| 5 | Ryan Murphy | USA | 9 | ↑4 |
| 6 | Kliment Kolesnikov | Russia | 8 | ↑2 |
| 7 | Caeleb Dressel | USA | 1 | ↓6 |
| 8 | Gregorio Paltrinieri | Italy | 23 | ↑15 |
| 9 | Kyle Chalmers | Australia | 10 | ↑1 |
| 10 | Carson Foster | USA | 19 | ↑9 |
| 11 | Zac Stubblety-Cook | Australia | 15 | ↑4 |
| 12 | Bobby Finke | USA | 4 | ↓8 |
| 13 | Nicolo Martinenghi | Italy | 22 | ↑9 |
| 14 | Adam Peaty | Great Britain | 2 | ↓12 |
| 15 | Shaine Casas | USA | 71 | ↑56 |
| 16 | Arno Kamminga | Netherlands | 13 | ↓3 |
| 17 | Nic Fink | USA | 43 | ↑26 |
| 18 | Duncan Scott | Great Britain | 7 | ↓11 |
| 19 | Florian Wellbrock | Germany | 11 | ↓8 |
| 20 | Hwang Sunwoo | South Korea | 25 | ↑5 |
| 21 | Hunter Armstrong | USA | 80 | ↑59 |
| 22 | Tom Dean | Great Britain | 14 | ↓8 |
| 23 | Michael Andrew | USA | 17 | ↓6 |
| 24 | Lukas Martens | Germany | NR | + |
| 25 | Elijah Winnington | Australia | 28 | ↑3 |
| 26 | Daiya Seto | Japan | 6 | ↓20 |
| 27 | Maxime Grousset | France | 70 | ↑53 |
| 28 | Tomoru Honda | Japan | 36 | ↑8 |
| 29 | Ben Proud | Great Britain | 52 | ↑23 |
| 30 | Josh Liendo | Canada | 57 | ↑27 |
| 31 | Mykhailo Romanchuk | Ukraine | 21 | ↓10 |
| 32 | Noe Ponti | Switzerland | 26 | ↓6 |
| 33 | Felix Auboeck | Austria | 53 | ↑20 |
| 34 | Kieran Smith | USA | 24 | ↓10 |
| 35 | Ahmed Hafnaoui | Tunisia | 16 | ↓19 |
| 36 | Chase Kalisz | USA | 27 | ↓9 |
| 37 | Ksawery Masiuk | Poland | NR | + |
| 38 | Andrei Minakov | Russia | 32 | ↓6 |
| 39 | Yohann Ndoye-Brouard | France | NR | + |
| 40 | Matt Temple | Australia | 54 | ↑14 |
| 41 | Pieter Coetze | South Africa | NR | + |
| 42 | Isaac Cooper | Australia | NR | + |
| 43 | Lewis Burras | Great Britain | NR | + |
| 44 | Lewis Clareburt | New Zealand | 61 | ↑17 |
| 45 | Matt Sates | South Africa | 44 | ↓1 |
| 46 | Chad Le Clos | South Africa | 45 | ↓1 |
| 47 | Apostolos Christou | Greece | NR | + |
| 48 | Samuel Short | Australia | NR | + |
| 49 | Alessandro Miressi | Italy | 41 | ↓8 |
| 50 | Lorenzo Galossi | Italy | NR | + |
| 51 | Pan Zhanle | China | NR | + |
| 52 | Antonio Djakovic | Switzerland | NR | + |
| 53 | Daniel Wiffen | Ireland | NR | + |
| 54 | Guilherme Costa | Brazil | NR | + |
| 55 | Jordan Crooks | Cayman Islands | NR | + |
| 56 | Ilya Borodin | Russia | 33 | ↓23 |
| 57 | Luke Greenbank | Great Britain | 37 | ↓20 |
| 58 | Dylan Carter | Trinidad and Tobago | NR | + |
| 59 | James Wilby | Great Britain | 64 | ↑5 |
| 60 | Drew Kibler | USA | 98 | ↑38 |
| 61 | Gui Caribe | Brazil | NR | + |
| 62 | Alberto Razzetti | Italy | 47 | ↓15 |
| 63 | Matt Richards | Great Britain | NR | + |
| 64 | Ilya Kharun | Canada | NR | + |
| 65 | Hubert Kos | Hungary | 65 | – |
| 66 | Diogo Ribeiro | Portugal | NR | + |
| 67 | Flynn Southam | Australia | NR | + |
| 68 | Bruno Fratus | Brazil | 76 | ↑8 |
| 69 | Yan Zibei | China | NR | + |
| 70 | Qin Haiyang | China | NR | + |
| 71 | Brendon Smith | Australia | 34 | ↓37 |
| 72 | Trenton Julian | USA | 86 | ↑14 |
| 73 | Mewen Tomac | France | NR | + |
| 74 | Fernando Scheffer | Brazil | 39 | ↓35 |
| 75 | Nandor Nemeth | Hungary | NR | + |
| 76 | Matt Fallon | USA | NR | + |
| 77 | Justin Ress | USA | NR | + |
| 78 | Joshua Edwards-Smith | Australia | NR | + |
| 79 | Yu Hanaguruma | Japan | NR | + |
| 80 | Jacob Whittle | Great Britain | NR | + |
| 81 | Jack Cartwright | Australia | NR | + |
| 82 | Thomas Neill | Australia | 78 | ↓4 |
| 83 | Szebasztian Szabo | Hungary | 69 | ↓14 |
| 84 | Simone Cerasuolo | Italy | NR | + |
| 85 | Katsuhiro Matsumoto | Japan | 68 | ↓17 |
| 86 | Wang Shun | China | 12 | ↓74 |
| 87 | Sven Schwarz | Germany | NR | + |
| 88 | Damien Joly | France | NR | + |
| 89 | Jakub Majerski | Poland | 55 | ↓34 |
| 90 | Lorenzo Mora | Italy | NR | + |
| 91 | Gabriel Jett | USA | NR | + |
| 92 | Finlay Knox | Canada | NR | + |
| 93 | Javier Acevedo | Canada | NR | + |
| 94 | Danas Rapsys | Lithuania | 46 | ↓48 |
| 95 | Kryzsztof Chmielewski | Poland | 84 | ↓11 |
| 96 | Henrik Christiansen | Norway | NR | + |
| 97 | Marco de Tullio | Italy | NR | + |
| 98 | Rafael Miroslaw | Germany | NR | + |
| 99 | Luke Hobson | USA | NR | + |
| 100 | Mack Horton | Australia | 63 | ↓37 |
Dropping out of the Top 100 (2022 ranking):
- #3 Evgeny Rylov
- #18 Ilya Shyamnovich
- #29 Shoma Sato
- #30 Gabriele Detti
- #5 Jack McLoughlin (retired)
- #38 Federico Burdisso
- #40 Jay Litherland
- #42 Martin Malyutin
- #49 Luca Urlando
- #50 Zach Apple
- #51 Xu Jiayu
- #56 Josif Miladinov
- #58 Vladimir Morozov
- #59 Mitch Larkin
- #60 Robert Glinta (retired)
- #62 Jeremy Desplanches
- #66 Hugo Gonzalez
- #67 Eddie WANG
- #72 Max Litchfield
- #73 Bryce Mefford
- #74 Zach Harting
- #75 Blake Pieroni (retired)
- #77 Florent Manaudou
- #79 Tamas Kenderesi
- #81 Radoslaw Kawecki
- #82 Coleman Stewart
- #83 Emre Sakci
- #85 Thom de Boer
- #87 Ippei Watanabe
- #88 Tom Shields
- #89 Tomoe Hvas (retired)
- #90 Ryan Held
- #91 Vladislav Grinev
- #92 James Guy
- #93 Takeshi Kawamoto
- #94 Mehdy Metella
- #95 Nicholas Santos (retired)
- #96 Andrii Govorov
- #97 Matti Mattsson
- #99 Michele Lamberti
- #100 Christian Diener
Slightly confused why James guy ain’t in the top 100 and people like Mack Horton are?
6 commonwealth medals 1 gold
2 bronze at worlds????
My guess is that Mack is above Guy because Mack was 6th in the 400 free this year, while Guy’s best result is 13th in the 200 Fly.
But I agree that I would have put Guy in the top 100.
I love the up/down arrows to reflect on how some people exceeded expectations last year or had surprisingly bad year. Good reflection.
By nation: USA -16; AUS -12; ITA/GBR – 9; FRA – 5; HUN/GER/JAP/CAN/CHN/BRA – 4; RUS/POL/RSA – 3; SUI – 2; ROM/NED/KOR//UKR/AUT/TUN/NZL/GRE/IRE/CAY/TRI/POR/LIT/NOR – 1
By continent: Europe – 48; Nth America – 22; Oceania – 13; Asia – 9; Sth America – 4; Africa – 4
The Europe > USA ratio is surprisingly high although it is clearly evident that we are seeing niche strengths becoming very powerful and internationally successful in a number of European countries and in some cases seeing new generations following through. The fact, however, that no European country hit double figures is indicative that these are tending to be niche strengths but not as yet truly “cross the board”.
AUS at 12 ? Cannot help… Read more »
I think the total of 12 seems bigger than it is. Half of Australia’s 12 are in the bottom third of swimmers, and I think most of the bottom third are unlikely to win an individual medal this year.
Very true. Hence the reference to being “flattered” rather than an indication that AUS are necessarily the 2nd strongest men’s team ……. they are NOT; more like 4th/5th.
Maybe also a degree of inflation due to 2/3 AUS men’s relays being “medal competitive.
Maybe you should check population figures before writing such statements: US is 32x times bigger than Hungary or more than 5x bigger than Italy but they have only 4x or closely 2x more swimmer than these two countries…I would rather calculated on a weighted average number. In this case Hungary is clearly the biggest powerhouse of swimming…
I’ve no idea how you managed to be offended by that post.
I’m curious to see if the US is lagging in post-COVID LCM jumps, especially with younger swimmers. We’ve seen a post-COVID latent jump in non-US LCM performances and in US short course too. It’s only expected that the “jump” will be realized later for a format with less opportunity.
I also think some of the legacy US swimmers are being overestimated so it’s an aggregate wash.
Interesting. Thanks!
Carson Foster is ranked too low
He’s pretty high for someone who’s never won an individual gold at a senior meet
i honestly cant tell if this is a joke or not
Elijah Winnington at #25 is unfair
Curious as to why Martens (especially) would be placed ahead of him.
I mean, Martens can realistically medal in a second race (800), plus he can easily final in 2 others, Winnington has at most a final in the 200 in him.
They’re both too low in my opinion, I’d have them ranked around 15, but it’s not ludicrous for Martens to be ahead (he’s like 1.5 years younger too)
Isn’t Bryce Mefford retired?
What’s the rationale for keeping Kolesnikov on the list (and in good ranking) but not including Rylov at all? I thought his suspension is almost complete.
Kolesnikov broke a WR last year. Rylov ranked 6th in the world in his best event and 14th in the world in his next-best event.
He had a great SC swim at the end of the year, but as has been pointed out, these lists are heavily (though not exclusively) LC ranked because there’s no big SC meets this year.
Frankly, Rylov’s results are headed in the wrong direction, and I wonder how his motivation is holding up. He’s lost many of his sponsors. His times already went in the wrong direction in LCM last year.
I don’t have a particularly-strong degree of confidence in FINA’s desire to keep suspensions in place any longer than they absolutely have to. But… Read more »