How Many Non-Americans, Who Trained In the U.S., Won Olympic Swimming Medals?

A famous swimmer asked us on Wednesday for an analysis of ‘Olympic swimming medalists who aren’t Americans, but trained in America.’

We can do that!

There were 219 actual medals (not medals table medals) given out for pool swimming at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games to 125 athletes.

First Data Point: 69 of those medals (32%) were awarded to 34 American athletes (25%).

Second Data Point: 14 of those medals (6%) were awarded to 6 international athletes who train in America (5%).

Third Data Point: None of those were relay medals, as far as we can tell. This was the one that I found to be most-fascinating. The countries that dominated the relay events (Australia, China, and Italy) are generally countries that send among the fewest swimmers to the American NCAA system, either because they have well-developed home training systems, and/or because the countries disincentivize training abroad, as is the case with Italy.

• See the 125 swimmers who are taking home medals from the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

There are two natural questions that derive from this data. One is whether American resources and expertise should be developing athletes from other countries, and two is ‘why are swimmers like Leon Marchand and Summer McIntosh able to come into our system and have more success than our athletes?’

The former question is a matter of personal opinion and politics. It also requires the context that while swimming is an ‘exporter’ of swimming expertise, they are an ‘importer’ of expertise in other sports – and that it’s hard to cut off one direction of that flow without impacting the other. In a world of professional athletics, as compared to patriotically-driven amateur athletics, restriction of international training of athletes would require a view of some bigger pictures.

There is also a bit of brinksmanship, as in this scenario, it becomes more likely for other countries to hire American swim coaches away into their countries, as we’ve seen with a coach like Mark Schubert traveling to coach in China.

• Read more about sporting globalism here.

In the latter category, the numbers are inflated a bit by the fact that the best male and best female swimmer at this meet both happen to be international swimmers who train in America. If you remove Leon Marchand and Summer McIntosh, the numbers aren’t that overwhelming.

But the cases of Marchand and McIntosh are the vital ones. The U.S. swim team still has the depth, but collectively, it seems like the U.S. collectively has lost the ability to find those couple of tenths to get to the top of the podium individually, to win the close races individually, and to take the gold medals.

So if America accepts that it cannot get rid of the foreign athletes training in the U.S., then America should be learning from these athletes, their developmental pathways, their talent, and trying to figure out how to get American swimmers back to the top of podiums.

There is also the special case of Ilya Kharun, who was raised in the U.S., thought he was eligible to represent the U.S., found out he wasn’t, and earlier this year became a U.S. citizen, formally.

America isn’t the only country that trains other countries’ Olympic swimmers, though it is by-far the leader in that category. Others that we identified are below. We looked pretty hard, but let us know in the comments if we missed any.

List of Non-American medalists who train primarily in America

Formatted as a Medals Table

Athletes who train primarily outside of the country they represent (that isn’t America):

• Daniel Wiffen, Ireland (UK – Loughborough)
• Ben Proud, UK (Turkey – Gloria Sports Arena)
• Kylie Masse (Spain – Sant Cugat)

Athletes who take extended training camps in other countries to train under the coaches in those other countries:

• Kim Woo-min (Australia)
• Kristof Milak, maybe, depending on who you ask?