Check Out SwimSwam’s Most-Read Articles of 2021

2021 was a year filled with lots of swimming action including the Olympics, US Olympic Trials, SC World Championships, ISL season, and NCAA Championships. In fact, there was so much swimming going on in 2021, that recaps from the latter three events weren’t even amongst the top 50 most-read articles of the year on SwimSwam. 

What did end up on the list? Multiple live recaps from Waves I and II of the US Olympic Trials, along with the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games found themselves as some of the most popular articles amongst swimming fans, making up over half of the list. 

The most popular recap was actually the Wave II Day 1 Prelims live recap from the US Olympic Trials meet, which outranked every other session. Perhaps eager swim fans wanted to get their first look at the forming US Olympic Team, or wanted to see the battle brewing for some of the spots up for grabs during that first finals session. The highest Olympics live recap also came from the day 1 prelims session, ranking 16th on the overall list. 

With them, there were several articles relating far beyond the swimming community, including several pieces surrounding Klete Keller’s role in the US Capitol Riots or Jeremy Kipp’s assault allegations at USC. Both stories occurred earlier in 2021, and still remain some of the most read articles in SwimSwam history. The initial story reporting Keller’s involvement in the riots was the second most-read article of the entire year. 

More recent articles detailing Lia Thomas’ journey in NCAA Swimming and breaststroke disqualifications at the SC World Championships are still gaining popularity. If there were more days left in 2021, these articles may have found themselves higher on the list.

Check out the most-read articles of 2021, including a breakdown by type of article.

Top 50 Most Read Articles of 2021 – Overall

# Article
1
2 Olympic Gold Medalist in US Capitol During Clashes Video Appears to Show
3 Event Schedules for Both Waves of 2021 US Olympic Trials
4 2021 US Olympic Trials Wave II Day 1 Prelims Live Recap
5
6 2021 US Olympic Trials Wave II Day 1 Finals Live Recap
7 2021 US Olympic Trials Wave II Day 2 Prelims Live Recap
8 2021 US Olympic Trials Wave II Day 5 Finals Live Recap
9
10 See the New 2021 US Olympic Swimming Trials Qualifying Standards
11 2021 US Olympic Trials Wave II Day 6 Finals Live Recap
12 2021 US Olympic Trials Wave II Day 2 Finals Live Recap
13 2021 US Olympic Trials Wave II Day 4 Finals Live Recap
14 Video Shows Lane Rope Tug in Tokyo Olympic Swimming
15 2021 US Olympic Trials Wave II Day 7 Finals Live Recap
16 Tokyo 2020 Olympics Day 1 Prelims Live Recap
17
18 2021 US Olympic Trials Wave II Day 5 Prelims Live Recap
19 Olympic Gold Medalist Maya Dirado Announces Pregnancy
20
21 2021 US Olympic Trials Wave I Day 1 Prelims Live Recap
22 2021 US Olympic Trials Wave II Day 4 Prelims Live Recap
23 Penn’s Lia Thomas Opens Up on Journey, Transition to Women’s Swimming
24
25 Tokyo 2020 Olympics Day 2 Finals Live Recap
26 2021 US Olympic Trials Wave II Pre Scratch Psych Sheets Released
27 2021 US Olympic Trials Wave II Day 6 Prelims Live Recap
28 Tokyo 2020 Olympics Day 5 Finals Live Recap
29 Olympic Champion Schoenmaker May Not Recieve RSA Medal Payout
30 Tokyo 2020 Olympics Day 2 Finals Live Recap
31 Tokyo 2020 Olympics Day 1 Finals Live Recap
32 Ella Eastin Retires From Swimming After Dysautonomia Diagnosis
33 Phelps: “Shocking that Caeleb Dressel Left Off 4×200 Freestyle Relay”
34 2021 US Olympic Trials Wave I Day 1 Finals Live Recap
35 Tokyo 2020 Olympics Day 3 Finals Live Recap
36 2021 US Olympic Trials: Here’s A Look at the Final Olympic Roster
37 Tokyo 2020 Olympics Day 6 Finals Live Recap
38
39 Tokyo 2020 Olympics Day 7 Finals Live Recap
40 Tokyo 2020 Olympics Day 8 Finals Live Recap
41 USC Looking Into Alleged on Deck Incident Involving Coach Jeremy Kipp
42 2021 US Olympic Trials Wave I Day 3 Prelims Live Recap
43 2021 US Olympic Trials Wave I Day 4 Prelims Live Recap
44 2021 US Olympic Trials Wave I Day 2 Prelims Live Recap
45 Tokyo 2020 Olympics Day 7 Prelims Live Recap
46 USC Head Swim Coach Jeremy Kipp Placed on Administrative Leave
47
48 Why was Australia’s -0.03 Relay Start Not a DQ: A Rules Deep Dive
49 Update: USA Swimming Will Split 2021 Olympic Trials into 2 Separate Meets
50 Tokyo 2020 Olympics Day 5 Prelims Live Recap

Live Recaps

Overall Rank Article
4
6
7
8
11
12
13
15
16
18
21
22
25
27
28
30
31
34
35
37
39
40
42
43
44
45
50

 

Non-Recap

Overall Rank Article
1
2
3
5
9
10
14
17
19
20
23
24
29
32
33
36
38
41
46
47
48
49

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Khachaturian
2 years ago

Can we get numbers for how these were picked and how many people clickes? Or is that private information.

New Age Swimmer
2 years ago

That comment from the Klete Keller article (#2) with 1.6k dislikes… gotta be the most disliked comment on this site, right?

McKeown-Hodges-McKeon-Campbell
Reply to  New Age Swimmer
2 years ago

wowee. even compared to other comments with more dislikes than likes on that article, that ratio is off the charts

Big Mac #1
Reply to  New Age Swimmer
2 years ago

I wanna see most upvoted comments of the year

Admin
Reply to  Big Mac #1
2 years ago

I wish we could pull that, but storing that kind of data for every comment would take an insane amount of database space…so sadly we don’t have it.

1.6k downvotes has to be close to the most-downvoted comment ever. Though, I’m sure now that I’m posting this, someone is going to try to make a bot to break that record.

Horninco
Reply to  New Age Swimmer
2 years ago

Somehow, it got 226 likes

Big Mac #1
Reply to  Horninco
2 years ago

The state of America, brother.

There's no doubt that he's tightening up
2 years ago

My guess is that the Number 1 article got lots of traffic from those outside the swimming community? Given that it’s about the Olympics more generally.

Would explain how it beat out the Klete Keller article, which I expected to be top. That was a huge scoop.

Admin

Yes, that’s correct re: the doping article. Was picked up on lots of different FB pages and some niche forums for other sports.

Keller was a huge scoop, but links from other news sources don’t drive nearly as much traffic as you would think.

2Fat4Speed
2 years ago

Hi SwimSwam,

I am curious how this works. Is it page visits, or unique visitors. For example, I was “working” during trials. To keep up with results and comments I kept coming back to the page when I could. Did I count as one or 27?

Joel
2 years ago

I know it’s based in America, but I’m surprised the trials recaps beat the Olympics recaps. Weird.

Stewart 100 back gold in Fukuoka
Reply to  Joel
2 years ago

Maybe it’s because many readers’ family and friends were at trials. Not many went to the Olympics.

Troyy
Reply to  Joel
2 years ago

Still more comments on the Olympics recaps.

Spectatorn
Reply to  Joel
2 years ago

Probably more could watch Olympics then trials. Trials had less air time and were during work hour in US.

Admin
Reply to  Joel
2 years ago

It’s very much a timing issue. The Olympics had much, much lower traffic than 2016, which aligns with the lower US television ratings, mostly because of the time zones.

Our overall traffic was much higher than 2016, but Olympic traffic was lower, which was interesting for us. People were excited for swimming in 2021, but the Olympics fell flat. I don’t think that would surprise most people who have been watching for a while.

About 60% of our traffic is from the US, about 40% is from “the rest of the world.”

Tokyo time zones are inconvenient for most of the world. European traffic for the Olympics was terrible – probably because finals were in the middle of the night… Read more »

Joel
Reply to  Braden Keith
2 years ago

I understand. But weren’t swimming finals in the morning just so it could be prime time in the USA?
and I wonder if the lack of Phelps affected interest in the US?

Troyy
Reply to  Joel
2 years ago

They were in the morning just for the US and this in turn actually screwed Europe because night finals would’ve been during the day time for them.

Troyy
Reply to  Braden Keith
2 years ago

It was actually a pretty convenient timezone for billions of people but the proportion of people interested is just much higher in Europe and the Americas than in Asia.

The elephant in the room is NBC who’s actually responsible for screwing Europe. Night finals would’ve been during the day for Europeans so they would’ve been watchable by everyone from East Asia to Western Europe which covers the vast majority of Earth’s population including the rapidly growing Africa. So really the timezone isn’t inconvenient for most of the world it’s just inconvenient for your part of the world and if there are night finals at LA28 Western Europe will suffer again but it’ll be day time for us in East Asia/Oceania.

Joel
Reply to  Troyy
2 years ago

Braden said there was even low interest in the US and low US TV ratings. Weird. Maybe winning fewer gold medals affected that but they still won 11 gold I think.

Admin
Reply to  Joel
2 years ago

My sense – and I don’t have data to back this up – that there was a lot of confusion over the time zones. That it made things feel a little disjointed for the average American, and it was unclear what was live and what wasn’t live.

I think NBC also gets a little worse every year at how they present the Games. I think they’re still sort of presenting it in a 2008 way when it’s 2021 and the market has shifted the way they consume media. I think, in general, people want to be MORE into things than they used to be. They want more detail. But NBC is still presenting it in a way that people want… Read more »

Joel
Reply to  Braden Keith
2 years ago

Thank goodness in Australia channel 7 was pretty clear on what was live and what wasn’t. And you could use an app to see other sports live. Swimming finals are one of their main priorities.

About Nicole Miller

Nicole Miller

Nicole has been with SwimSwam since April 2020, as both a reporter and social media contributor. Prior to joining the SwimSwam platform, Nicole also managed a successful Instagram platform, amassing over 20,000 followers. Currently, Nicole is pursuing her B.S. in Biomedical Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. After competing for the swim …

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