2025 World Championships
- July 27 – August 3, 2025 (pool swimming)
- Singapore, Singapore
- World Aquatics Championships Arena
- LCM (50m)
- Meet Central
- Live Results
- SwimSwam Preview Index
- Psych Sheet
Today was the first official day of competition in Singapore for the 2025 World Championships, starting with the first round of Water Polo matches.
In celebration of the start of competition, World Aquatics Unveiled this year’s medals, which are made of recycled aluminum cans as a part of their “Trash to Treasure” Initiative.
The 5,000 medals that will be awarded each weigh approximately 150 grams (5.2 oz for our American readers) and were made from about 100,000 cans. The cans were collected by students from five preschools, eight primary schools, and three secondary schools that participate in the School Recycling Leauge in Singapore.
The cans were processed, cleaned, and smelted into the medals by a local design agency called ipse ipsa ipsum.
Credit: Singapore 2025
The slogan “Water Shapes Us” appears on both the back of the medals, and on the ribbon the athletes will wear around their necks. This is the theme for the meet, based on Singapore’s rich history with water. This is described on the World Aquatics page for the event as:
“The event’s theme, ‘Water Shapes Us’, encapsulates Singapore’s relationship with water and its significance in Singapore’s development and identity as a nation. Water shapes Singapore’s geography and is crucial in the nation’s economic growth. The tagline also demonstrates how the Championships in Singapore will nurture and celebrate opportunities for collective achievement and camaraderie.”
These medals will be handed out across 77 different events over six different sports including artistic swimming, diving, high diving, open water swimming, pool swimming, and water polo.
The pool swimming events will begin on Sunday, July 27th at 10 am local time.
Aluminum instead of gold? Incredible!
Singapore should have been disqualified as organising country for such a shame !
There hasn’t been much gold in Olympic gold medals since 1912, and never has been much at the World Championships.
All that sacrifice for a piece of squashed aluminum cans… i think of the words of Solomon: All is vanity…
This Bud’s for you!
I hope they last much longer than the Paris medals.
Schoolkids at just 16 schools collecting enough cans to create 5,000 medals sounds like a pretty impressive feat to me. Unless each school has something like 1,000 students, I suppose.
Did they get the cans from the bottom of the Seine in Paris? Now that’s recycling with a twist.
More like “Diet Coke Shapes Us,” but at least they tried.
23 of them were recycled out of a Chinese kitchen
Wow!