U.S. Olympians Claire Weinstein and Katie Grimes, along with Sandpipers of Nevada teammates Luke Ellis (US National Team), Gabriel Manteufel (Junior National Team in the pool, National Team in open water), and others, will travel to swim a leg of the Swimming World Cup and Open Water Swimming World Cup this fall.
The group will first fly to Hong Kong to race in Stop 4 of the Open Water Swimming World Cup, the penultimate stop of the five-stop 2024 series. Then they will take the four hour flight to Singapore for the final stop of the three-stop 2024 World Aquatics Swimming World Cup Series.
Sandpipers’ Asian Tour
- October 26 – 27: World Aquatics Open Water Swimming World Cup, Hong Kong
- October 31 – November 2: World Aquatics Swimming World Cup, Singapore
There will be $30,000 up for grabs at the Open Water World Cup and $224,000 in prize money awarded at the Swimming World Cup. While athletes planning to race in the NCAA are technically still not allowed to collect prize money, the Operation Gold loophole means that if the money flows through Olympic Committees, it can be kept beyond actual expenses.
Most of these swimmers have participated in the Open Water World Cup before, including Weinstein’s big win in Funchal, Portugal last December. They have all competed in pool World Cups as well – Weinstein and Grimes have participated in the series in the last two seasons, while Ellis raced in 2022 and Manteufel raced in 2023.
Grimes won the 400 IM in both Berlin and Athens in last year’s series.
Gabe also made the National Team in Open Water 🙂
It looks like the deadline to enter was September 17. When will the entries be posted?
Weinstein won Funchal World Cup in December…
I see how Katie and Claire going tor a bit of the World Cup makes sense, but others? Does anyone know if the Sandpipers team foots the bill for these kids and coaches for trips like this? If not, lots of money being spent by parents for a dive in a pool and open water. And not to mention, don’t these kids have school?
Many (most?) of the Sandpipers’ elite group does online high school.
Makes sense. I think some qualify for some money from US swimming since they made the Olympics or other major competitions.
Ah yes, let’s not forget about the cult of Sandpipers
They weren’t kidding when they said swimming is a very expensive sport.
There were rumors that Grimes was still looking at competing in the NCAA – is there any truth to that?
Given how it’s gone so far for Sims, perhaps Grimes is reconsidering plans to swim in college.
Well Grimes hasn’t been too hot recently either…obviously way better but her 2 year taper never panned out.
I mean…she won an individual Olympic silver medal in Paris at age 18…so I’m gonna have to say that’s pretty 🔥.
Winning a medal is awesome, but I think Noah was pointing to the fact that she didn’t get any best times, and was a bomb in the 1500.
For sure rumors that she’s been visiting colleges this fall. I’m not sure she’s made a decision one way or the other, but I suspect she’ll at least give college a shot.
I’m curious where she’s considering given women’s distance in the NCAA has stalled a bit, but maybe is seeing a resurgence again. Based on last year’s NCAAs the top distance programs are probably UGA, Florida, and Indiana. Then you have Wisconsin (Yuri + 4 scorers in the mile), Stanford, Cal, and UVA as more wild card programs where you could see a rationale for going to them based on the coaches even if the distance performances aren’t totally at where the others were last year. Then the final wild card is Texas which has been hit or miss for distance historically, but Bowman did just coach Madden to the fastest American 800 done by someone other than Ledecky.
I hope we get to see Weinstein and Grimes at short course worlds in December.
Side-note: I wonder if either of them are reevaluating their plans to swim in college. We say how badly the transition from Sandpipers to college swimming at Florida went for Bella Sims.