Last week, USA Swimming CEO Kevin Ring came on the SwimSwam podcast where he revealed a few major news items. One of the things he told SwimSwam was that beginning in 2028, the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) would no longer allow international athletes at their training facilities, namely the United States Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs.
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This news came in response to a question asked by Editor-in-Chief Braden Keith slightly before the 40-minute mark about the number of international athletes training in the United States. A lot of the conversation surrounding American swimming recently has involved the fact that the rest of the world seems to be “catching up” to the United States, but many of the best swimmers in the world train with American coaches either in or as an extension of the NCAA system.
The two best swimmers in the world right now, Summer McIntosh and Leon Marchand are international, and both train at the University of Texas with Bob Bowman, who notably trained the best swimmer of all time, Michael Phelps.
At the 2024 Paris Olympics, Marchand, who is French, alone won four individual gold medals while the American men won just one. McIntosh, who swims for Canada, also trained in the United States, though she was with a club program at the time, and she won three individual golds, more than any other single female swimmer.
After the Paris Olympics, SwimSwam analyzed the data about foreign swimmers training in the United States. Of the 219 medals awarded in the pool in Paris, only 14 went to international athletes who train in the United States and they were spread out among just six athletes.
The same conversation started again in the aftermath of the 2025 World Championships, where American athletes seemed to underperform as they fought to earn their way to the top of the medal table.
Again, SwimSwam dug into the data in an even more thorough way. Six non-American men who train in the United States won individual medals in Singapore, including Marchand, and four relay swimmers meeting those criteria won medals.
The women’s side had two non-American athletes who trained in the U.S. win medals, Summer McIntosh and Anna Elendt, though McIntosh spent most of 2025 in France. Only one relay medalist met the criteria on the women’s side.
Keith asked Ring about this conversation, highlighting McIntosh and Marchand in particular. Ring did not share his own particular opinion about the situation, but he emphasized the importance of training American athletes.
He discussed the fact that American athletes who are training with the top international swimmers are getting the opportunity to race them every day, making American swimmers better as well. At Texas, this includes athletes like Regan Smith and Shaine Casas.
Ring went on to say, “The USOPC does have a policy that starting in 2028, only American athletes will swim at USOPC facilities.” The current USOPC training center website does not have any information about the policy, but it states that all requests for international guests must receive approval from each sport’s National Governing Body.
This news comes just weeks after the Texas training group, which included a number of international athletes like Hubert Kos, McIntosh, and Marchand, completed a 24-day training camp in Colorado Springs before the 2025 U.S. Open.
Many college teams also travel to Colorado Springs for training trips during the year, and the restriction on international athletes will complicate those training plans.
We reached out to the USOPC for comment, but have not received a response.
You can watch the full podcast here:
I feel like what people don’t understand is this isn’t about swimming it is about all sports and if anyone has ever trained up there, there are tons of international teams there training, especially wrestling. These international teams take beds away from US athletes wanting to go up and train. So the goal is to limit/remove international athletes to free up beds and give more opportunities to US athletes to take advantage of the facilities. When I was competing there were times we were turned away because they didn’t have bed available to stay due to other programs and many of those international athletes. I get the frustration but with a home Olympics home athletes need to be the priority… Read more »
How is / was this facility built and funded.
In my 40 plus years in usas I’ve never seen it?
Nice to see Phelps weighing in against this stupid and counterproductive policy. Article to follow?
The roster shrinking in the NCAA did more to limit the opportunity set for USA swimmers and international recruits in one action than a thousand years of benefit to International swimmers vs missed opportunity (if any ) for USA swimmers in Colorado pool time.
All the major pro teams and probably all the major NCAA teams have foreign swimmers.Even the large age group teams like Bolles or Sarasota have foreign athletes.So they’re not going to use this pool.That means virtually all of the USA,s top swimmers will altitude train somewhere else with their team mates.How does this help USA Swimming or even make this facility financially viable?Am I missing something?
Sounds good. They should also be banned from competing in USA NCAA events as well. Save college scholarships for our athletes.
Shouldn’t the people funding the scholarships have the final say in who receives them?
(Hint: in almost every case, it’s not American tax money).
It’s definitely an optics move, not having access to USOTC is not going to make or break McIntosh, Marchand and Kos. Mcintosh did altitude training in France last winter. Many alternative sites already mentioned, but if the USOTC is often underutilized, why not provide access for $$$. It would help with the operating cost and might give people working there more hours.
I wouldn’t conflate college scholarships with American Olympic development. It’s part of an ecosystem. Do you think the primary job of college swim coaches is to develop future Olympians? No, they need to do well at the conference and NCAAs in order not to get replaced. UVA, Stanford and a couple of other top schools get the pick… Read more »
And there is the false assumption everyone, including foreign athletes, at NCAA champs is on a scholarship.
I do not like symbolic gestures. A reasonable debate can be had about using limited United States resources being used to help non-Americans. But pool time at the USOPTC is not scarce. Anyone can rent it almost at anytime. Americans are not losing out because the pool is occupied by foreigners. This token move distracts from a real discussion to be had about the allocation of resources.
Yeah, and by the way…the USOPC could use that money since they’re not taxpayer funded.
As of 12/2024, the USOPC had nearly $200 million of cash on its books, and over $1 billion in assets. I don’t think it needs a few dollars from the Texas pro group’s rental of the OTC, thank you very much.
https://assets.contentstack.io/v3/assets/blt9e58afd92a18a0fc/blt15bea27596df6f03/685bd27612948fadeb751e5e/2024_US_Olympic_and_Paralympic_Committee_FS_FINAL.pdf
For as many US Olympic sports federations, facilities, support structures etc that falls under USOPC, $200 million is not that much, AP is 55m
This is hilarious.
“cash on its books”. Laughable.
“$1 Billion in assets” oh you mean the giant facility? thats free to run right? and because its worth a BILLION everyone who works there must be rich right?
A few thoughts…
This seems like a mostly ‘optics’ decision to me, but not entirely. It’s a bad look to the general public when they hear that a foreign athlete is using the United States Olympic Training Center to improve.
Yanking college scholarships from foreign athletes is a stupid idea. Melting pot, gives us your poor, your huddled masses, etc. Most of us come from foreign blood. Pump the brakes on kicking these kids out.
Can/do US athletes train in other countries? Certainly. Do they use those countries ’Olympic Training Centers’? I don’t know the answer to that question. Or are we the only country that has such?
Re: ‘only good things can come from these athletes training… Read more »
I think you’re probably right in your first paragraph. The nuance makes it kind of a ‘nothing burger,’ but the general public isn’t really concerned with nuance.
Each country’s training centers are set up a bit differently. Whether something is an “Olympic training center” is again nuanced. Paige Madden would be the most obvious recent example. She trained full time at Loughborough, which was a designated Elite Training Centre for Olympic & Paralympic athletes by UK Sport. I guess that’s not precisely the same as an Olympic Training Centre, but in practice it is.
So in swimming “yes, basically.” In other sports its fairly rampant if you’re comparing the next-most comparable training centers in those places.
But again…the entire… Read more »