A little over a year ago, SwimSwam started releasing the Top 100 for 2025. This is a list we make annually, where we do our best to rank men and women for the coming calendar year.
With 2025 wrapping up, and the first of our 2026 lists coming out earlier this week, it is time to review how we did with last year’s rankings.
2025 Women’s Rankings
When looking at last year’s rankings, our top 10 picks were strong with nine of the 10 winning at least one individual medal at Worlds and eight of them winning multiple medals. The only place we were slightly off the mark in the top 10 was the #10 ranked Chinese butterflyer, Zhang Yufei. Zhang was coming off three bronze medals at the 2024 Olympics, and it seemed likely she would win multiple at Worlds as well. She ended up only swimming the 100 fly where she finished 4th overall.
Katharine Berkoff and Lani Pallister both won multiple medals as well, sitting at #15 and #16 respectively. Berkoff won the gold medal in the 50 backstroke and a bronze in the 100 back while Pallister took a silver in the 800 free and a bronze in the 1500.
There were a few medalists that we missed ranking entirely, with German breaststroker Anna Elendt being our biggest oversight. After not making an Olympic semifinal in 2024, she did not earn a spot on our top 100, but she had a massive turn around in 2025 that culminated in her earning the gold medal in the women’s 100 breaststroke at the World Championships as our only unranked gold medalist on the women’s side.
At #26, Dutch swimmer Marrit Steenbergen was the lowest ranked pool swimming gold medalist with her win in the 100 freestyle, and at #90 Moesha Johnson was the lowest ranked gold medalist with three open water gold medals, though our ranking was focused on pool swimming only.
Roos Vanotterdijk was another majorly under-ranked swimmer in 2025, coming in at 99 to just make the list before making five event semifinals and winning a silver medal in the 100 fly and a bronze medal in the 50 fly at the 2025 World Championships.
The event we struggled the most with on the women’s side was the 50 free. Gold medalist Meg Harris was ranked 22nd and silver medalist Wu Qingfeng and bronze medalist Cheng Yujie went completely unranked.
There were two other medalists we missed ranking, Wan Letian — who won bronze in the 50 back — and Kaylene Corbett — who won bronze in the 200 breast
Top 100 For 2025 — Men’s Rankings
Our men’s rankings were all over the place in 2025. You could argue that the swimmer in the top 10 who was in the right spot was Leon Marchand in #1. Pan Zhanle, our #2 ended up missing the men’s 100 free final entirely, finishing 10th in the semifinals.
#3 Bobby Finke only won one bronze medal in the 1500, and #4 Kristof Milak dropped out of Worlds entirely, earning no medals.
After that, our ranking went better. The 11 spots from #5 to #15 saw nine individual medalists with only Daniel Wiffen, who was dealing with appendicitis at Worlds, and Josh Liendo, who had an underwhelming Worlds but broke the SCM World Record in the 100 fly during 2025, getting ranked in those spots with no medals.
There were a few men’s medalists we missed ranking as well, namely American Luca Urlando, who won the gold medal in the men’s 200 fly in Singapore after coming back from more than five years of injury.
We also missed ranking Australian Harrison Turner, who picked up the bronze medal in the 200 fly this year after failing to make the Olympic team in 2024 and making his senior international debut at the 2024 World Championships.
The other men’s medalists we didn’t rank were all bronze medalists: Tatsuya Murasa, 200 free, Pavel Samusenko, 50 back, and Denis Petrashov, 100 breast.
For thoroughness, in addition to medals won, can we also see who lost the most weight in Singapore?
Any word on whether Ryan Murphy is retired, or planning to come back for LA?
Who the hell put Walsh at number 4!
Does Wiffen swim the Com Games
Health Alert!…The misunderstanding in this comment thread is proof of lack of brain mitochondia in many of our commenters. They can turn this around by getting back in the pool and swimming regularly.
REVIEWING SWIMSWAM’S TOP 100 FOR 2025
Can we please agree that a much better title would be:
REVIEWING SWIMSWAM’S TOP 100 PREDITIONS FOR 2025
No, anyone with basic reading comprehension skills understands the title as is.
Really?
And I suppose me, who reads voraciously, is the only one here who is guilty of “skimming” an article? Putting trust in the headline?
Come on, Man!
(Yes, I spelled PREDICTIONS wrong.) 😂
Not surprising
No period?
In fairness, if you’re going to write multiple comments complaining about the article you should probably read the article first and not just the headline. I think that’s a fair requirement
I’m guilty. I skimmed from headline to list. My bad. I admit it. See? 😂 (I guess I’m the only one here who ever did that.) 🤷🏼♂️
(Actually, some others did.)
But can we please admit that the title should be REVIEWING SWIMSWAM’S TOP 100 PREDICTIONS FOR 2025?
Mitochondria
Florian Wellbrock’s sweep of 4 for 4 Open Water gold medals at Worlds in Singapore should deserve at least an honorary mention, should it not?
This was a list generated in 2025 looking forward. It was made before that happened.
Incorporating open water is tricky. It’s objectively a pool-focused list. Florian swims both. His pool performance in 2025 maybe puts him in the last 10-15 in the list. I understand that sometimes folks see someone as a “pool swimmer” and then they do something in open water and that gets conflated with being a “pool swimmer’s performance,” but I don’t really think that fits into this ranking structure.
Is there a good explanation why you have listed Moesha Johnson‘s 3 open water gold medals but none of the 4 open water gold medals (sweep) for Florian Wellbrock? Not even an honorary mention?
39 is much higher than 90
Marchand will likely top the list as top again but who second? Popovici? Urlando?
Popovici is the obvious answer. But Grousset and Jaouadi both also won multiple individual golds.
Based on objective criteria, Urlando will scrape into the top 10 but nowhere near top 5. There are 11 men who matched or beat Urlando’s medal haul at worlds.
100% Popovici