As SwimSwam reported yesterday, a significant portion of Team USA came down with food poisoning at the team’s pre-World Championship training camp in Phuket, Thailand. At the time, a coach with an athlete on the team described the outbreak as affecting “almost half” of the roster.
Now, sources close to Team USA have confirmed to SwimSwam that about 10 U.S. athletes had to stay behind in Phuket because they were too sick to travel with the rest of the team.
The entire team was originally scheduled to travel to Singapore early on July 22, with competition set to begin on July 27. The flight from Phuket to Singapore is roughly two hours, considerably shorter than the six-hour journey Team USA took in 2023 from their Singapore training camp to Fukuoka, Japan for the Worlds.
According to one source, swimmers who were already feeling better or hadn’t yet shown symptoms have already gone to Singapore, but some who went to Singapore are now starting to show symptoms.
American athletes remaining in Phuket are reportedly being told to order off the menu, not to eat from the buffet, and to avoid vegetables. It is anticipated that these swimmers will be heading to Singapore in the coming days.
Team Great Britain, also staying at the same resort, is allegedly dealing with several illnesses as well.
Both teams are staying at Thanyapura Phuket, a sport and health resort that features an eight-lane, 50-meter Olympic pool. This facility is used by many high-performance squads worldwide throughout the year to conduct training camps, most notably Dean Boxall and his St. Peters Western group, who are known to travel to the resort for an extended training camp at least once a year.
Team USA’s Original Travel Schedule:
- Training camp: July 11 – 21 — Phuket, Thailand
- International training: July 22 – 26 — Singapore
- Competition: July 27 – August 3 — Singapore
- Return home: August 4
Athletes go to Thanyapura Phuket for the doping, not the food.
In a sport in which medals and records are often differentiated by only 1/10s or 1/100s, anyone who’s ever had even mild food poisoning will confirm it can affect athlete’s performances very significantly. What a shame for swimmers who may never get another chance at this level. This kind of issue could have been easily anticipated and avoided with leadership more concerned with the well-being of the swimmers!
Usually the World Championships one year after the Olympics Games gets the least amount of attention…not this time I guess.
Will Bradenerd have stats on this?
Bradenerd ! Lol. Love it
Bad fried rice
nice
Turns out it was a bit of a nothing burger. None of the people confirmed to be “really sick” are that relevant to any gold medals
I didn’t know you had the ability to diagnose someone from thousands of miles away. Regardless of whether they were contenders or not they are still young people that worked their asses to get to this level and some might not even get that chance again.
I mean… watch and see. When none of the medals are impacted by it then 🤷🏼♂️
This aged like milk.
A lil’ extra propulsion
Concerned that Lilly King may be down. Pretty sure Cox is in the hospital. Anyone know of any others?
pretty sure jillian is in singapore. if she was the one who was hospitalized im not sure if someone being in singapore is necessarily an indication of how sick they were / are / will be
Yeah I think King is one of the women’s I haven’t seen a video or pics at Singapore