Swimming Australia is the latest federation to confirm that it won’t send a swimming team to the 2026 Youth Olympic Games in Dakar, Senegal. Swimming’s other global super power, the United States, also won’t send a team.
A scaled-back version of the quadrennial event will be held in Africa this year after a four year delay from the scheduled 2022. Among the changes are no relays and reducing the roster to 2 boys and 2 girls per country. The event is heavily designed around focusing efforts on better engaging Africa in the Olympic movement, which leaves limited developmental value for the major swimming nations.
Both Australia and the United States will instead focus their junior teams toward the Junior Pan Pac Championships from August 17-20 in Vancouver, Canada.
Australia has had a successful history at the Youth Olympic Games. In the three editions, they have won five gold medals (which ranks them 5th) and 32 total medals (which ranks them 3rd).
At the last edition in 2018, Kaylee McKeown won gold in the 50 backstroke, silver in the 100 backstroke, and bronze in the 200 backstroke. Those medals came after her senior international debut at the 2017 World Championships.
Australia also won a silver medal in the girls’ 400 medley relay; Chelsea Hodges won silver in the girls’ 50 breaststroke; and Michaela Ryan won bronze in the 200 fly.
I heard they made swimming 17 & U instead of 18 &under, is this true? Could any of the admins reply or post an article? Youth Olympics for swimming has always been 18&U
Yes, it’s true. Article with more format details coming soon.
That’s a bad look for the event when the two most-storied nations in the history of the sport pass on participating.
A well connected person told me that the IOC doesn’t really believe in the Youth Olympics anymore, and that they’re just carrying it forward out of respect to Bach, who considered it one of his signature events. So, they’re really trying to focus on its value to Africa in 2026, which is clear in the selection procedures and “principles” docs.
This sounds right- I noticed the 2030 host has not been selected, and that’s just 4 years away. Looks like the end
Also Coventry scraped the planned Olympic E Games last month too.