Budapest’s Own Kristof Milak Leads Prize Money Earners at 2022 Worlds

Per our calculations, 22-year-old Hungarian Kristof Milak earned the most prize money at the 2022 World Championships in his native Budapest, where the home crowd cheered him to a new 200 fly world record and the $50,000 bonus that comes along with it. Milak raked in $92,500, just ahead of the $87,547.62 brought in by new men’s 100 back world record holder Thomas Ceccon.

Rounding out the top three is Katie Ledecky, who enjoyed a rebound of sorts at her fifth Worlds after taking home nearly half as much money in 2019.

Five of the top 10 earners are breakout stars who didn’t compete at the last World Championships (Ceccon, Leon Marchand, Summer McIntosh, Mollie O’Callaghan, and Torri Huske).

The oldest of the top 10 earners is 28-year-old Swede Sarah Sjostrom, who won $56,500 this week after finishing the last ISL season as the top earner with $269,000.

Former top earner Caeleb Dressel secured $24,000 this year after totaling $140,000 in 2019. Dressel withdrew midway through the meet due to undisclosed medical reasons.

We calculated our totals based on FINA’s listed prize money for the event.

NCAA rules will likely allow American collegiate or high school athletes to keep their prize money from this meet. We learned from the 2021 Short Course World Championships that the USOPC/USA Swimming have found a loophole in NCAA rules.

The NCAA allows athletes to accept prize money that comes from a national Olympic committee payout like the USOPC’s Operation Gold program. While that originally was intended to encompass mostly the ‘medal bonuses’ that most countries pay for the Olympics and other elite international meets, the loophole is that USA Swimming can collect prize money on behalf of athletes, and pay it to them via the Operation Gold pathway.

At the 2021 Short Course World Championships, that loophole didn’t include World Record bonuses, because they were paid directly to athletes and not funneled through the federation.

2022 World Champs Prize Money

• Top 8 finishers in each event earn prize money:
  • 1st: $20,000
  • 2nd: $15,000
  • 3rd: $10,000
  • 4th: $6,000
  • 5th: $5,000
  • 6th: $4,000
  • 7th: $3,000
  • 8th: $2,000
• World records: $50,000 each (up from $30,000 in 2019)

A few notes about the list below:

• We calculated these out manually, and though we tried to account for all ties, there may be mistakes somewhere in the data. If you see something that looks off, let us know.
• When ties occurred, we followed the typical rules: if swimmers tied for second, we add up the prize money for 2nd and 3rd and split the total between the two tied swimmers.

2022 World Championships Prize Money List – Pool Swimming

Note: pool athletes who also competed in open water swimming would have additional prize money.