Swimming’s Duel in the Pool Is More All-Star Weekend than Euro-Cup Final, and I Loved It

2022 DUEL IN THE POOL

• Friday, August 19 – Sunday, August 21, 2022
• Sydney, Australia
• Sydney Olympic Park Aquatic Centre (pool swimming, Aug. 20-21)
• Bondi Beach (open water, Aug. 19)
• Start Times
  • Friday – open water: 9:00 am local / 7:00 pm ET on Thursday
  • Saturday – 7:00 pm local / 5:00 am ET
  • Sunday – 7:00 pm local / 5:00 am ET
• LCM (50m)
• Meet Central
• Full US roster
• Full Australian roster
• Day 2 Live Recap

When the pool portion of the 2022 Duel in the Pool began on Saturday morning, my instinctive response was the familiar groans from the days of the International Swimming League. A poorly-publicized event with a lot of rules, scoring changing on the fly without announcement, and rosters that arrived at the meet different than organizers proclaimed them to be.

But as the session unfolded, I found myself with an entirely-different emotion from the ISL: enjoyment and excitement to see what chaos was going to come next.

What I realized is that I was looking at the meet the wrong way, because this isn’t your slightly-older-cousin’s Duel in the Pool.

While the original Duel in the Pool was a hyper-competitive, cutthroat battle for global swimming supremacy that the sport’s stars wouldn’t dare miss, this meet is different. The old Duel in the Pool was like the Euro Cup final; this new iteration is more akin to Major League Baseball’s or the NBA’s All-Star weekend. And I think that’s a niche worth filling in the sport.

Do all of the best players show up for the home run derby or slam dunk contest every year? Not at all. But it is an opportunity for young players to make the name, and the events still draw huge television ratings.

Whereas the ISL is trying to reinvent the sport of swimming, this year’s version of the Duel in the Pool is something different. The word “carnival” keeps popping into my head, just sort of a wild show that keeps your head turning left and right, with wrinkles showing up unexpectedly and throwing chaos into the mix. Only the most hardcore of baseball fans go into the Home Run Derby or All-Star Game understanding all of the new rules that have been added or tweaked each year, and this felt very the same (where not even the hardcore fans were kept abreast of all of the nuance of the rules).

And the day was chaos. If you tried to follow it like you would any other swim meet, you would be absolutely lost. But if you just sunk into your armchair and forced yourself to start with a smile, it was really rather enjoyable.

That doesn’t mean the format doesn’t need work. I think it could be marketed and promoted a little more clearly, and I think some of the gimmicks worked better than others. Nor would I suggest that this Duel in the Pool format is an apt replacement for anything resembling the swimming that we all know in love.

But it’s a collection of “I wonder what would happen if” races and the kind of coaching decisions that sports fans love to question, but rarely get the opportunity to in swimming. The timing is perfect too – at the end of probably the most stressful and unusual 12 month periods in the modern history of the sport, it’s a light-hearted affair that doesn’t give any athlete the time or really the opportunity to focus on the ‘stress’ of the race. And frankly, there were still some great swims, enough to hold the interest of the ‘get off my lawn’ types who just tune in to see 50-points in the 100 fly.

In fact, I’d love to see the series expand – and not in any kind of an organized tournament format where the winners really start to matter and we have to really codify the flare. Rather, I’d love to see the event remain as a standalone spectacle, an Icecapades for swimming, tailored to the specific talents of the participating nations.

I have no idea what’s going to happen tomorrow in Sydney, but I know I’m going to wake up at 5AM to watch.