2022 COMMONWEALTH GAMES
- Friday, July 29 – Wednesday, August 3, 2022
- Birmingham, England
- Sandwell Aquatic Center
- Start Times
- Prelims: 10:30 am local / 5:30 am ET
- Finals: 7:00 pm local / 2:00 pm ET
- LCM (50m)
- Meet Central
- Event Schedule
- Entry List
With just a few days until the beginning of the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, England, your favorite SwimSwam drafters are back. Just as we did for the 2022 World Championships, myself, Retta Race, Braden Keith, and Coleman Hodges each drafted a team of 8 swimmers for our fantasy teams.
The premise is simple: each of us drafted a team of eight swimmers who will compete at the Commonwealth Games with the goal of assembling the team that will score the most points according to the system below.
The draft worked a little differently than it did last time when we draft in continental categories (each team consisted of one swimmer from Europe, North American, South America, Asia, Oceania, and Africa, and two additional wild card picks). While we didn’t draft swimmers into categories, the rule was that no team could have more than two swimmers from a single country.
You can watch us draft our teams of eight in this recent episode of the SwimSwam podcast:
We’ll be keeping track of how each of our teams does at the Commonwealth Games and we’ll be using the same scoring system this time around to reward the champion. As a refresher, here’s the scoring system that we will use to assign points to each GM’s team:
Scoring System for the 2022 SwimSwam Fantasy Draft
- Individual Gold Medal: 6 points
- Individual Silver Medal: 5 points
- Individual Bronze Medal: 4 points
- Relay Gold Medal, Swam in Finals: 4 points
- Relay Silver Medal, Swam in Finals: 3 points
- Relay Bronze Medal, Swam in Finals: 2 points
- Any relay medal, Only Swam in Prelims: 1 point
- Made an Individual Final, Didn’t Medal: 1 point
- Individual World Record Bonus: 3 points
- Relay World Record Bonus: 1 point
- DQ: -2 points
Retta had the first pick overall and picked multi-Olympic medalist Emma McKeon who sat out of Worlds this year but will be back in action in Birmingham. Next, I selected Mollie O’Callaghan who was the second-highest scorer in the World Championships draft, while Coleman picked Kyle Chalmers and Braden got Kaylee McKeown as his round 1 pick.
Check out the full breakdown of who selected who throughout the eight-round draft:
| ROUND | RETTA | BEN | COLEMAN | BRADEN |
| 1 | Emma McKeon (AUS) | Mollie O’Callaghan (AUS) | Kyle Chalmers (AUS) | Kaylee McKeown (AUS) |
| 2 | Duncan Scott (SCT) | Shayna Jack (AUS) | Tom Dean (ENG) | Ariarne Titmus (AUS) |
| 3 | James Guy (ENG) | Summer McIntosh (CAN) | Meg Harris (AUS) | Kylie Masse (CAN) |
| 4 | Lewis Burras (ENG) | Tatjana Schoenmaker (RSA) | Josh Liendo (CAN) | Maggie MacNeil (CAN) |
| 5 | Elijah Winnington (AUS) | Luke Greenbank (ENG) | Freya Anderson (ENG) | Adam Peaty (ENG) |
| 6 | Chad le Clos (RSA) | Matt Sates (RSA) | Lara van Niekerk (RSA) | Ben Proud (ENG) |
| 7 | Alys Thomas (WAL) | Anna Hopkin (ENG) | Lewis Clareburt (NZL) | Daniel Jervis (WAL) |
| 8 | Katerine Savard (CAN) | Rebecca Smith (CAN) | Mary-Sophie Harvey (CAN) | Pieter Coetzee (RSA) |
Make sure to check back in for all of SwimSwam’s coverage of this meet, which begins on Friday, July 29, and follow along as we find out whether myself, Retta, Braden, or Coleman comes out on top of this draft.
Any reports on Jack’s hand? Could be a factor in relay selections, or not!
Does Ben really think Greenbank has any chance to sweep the backstrokes? He’s not a sprinter. He has never been close to 25s barrier in 50 back. Despite the thin field, there are still a bunch of competitors whose 50 back PR is way faster than his.
In 100 back he’ll face a dog fight with Larkin, Coetze, Jeffcoat etc.
With no heats in the women’s relays, Meg Harris has no chance of fighting for a spot in the finals relay team. She is in the 50 metre free and that’s it. Relays the 4×100 relay maybe and a very very very slim chance the 4×200. She would probably earn one more point on the 4×100 mixed free but that’s it.
Braden team in terms of depth looks the strongest with Proud and Jervis 6 and 7 picks Emma is a strong pick because she will be picked for every applicable relay final and should win most of them with world record opportunities
I don’t think Meg Harris has a lot of relay potential. There is NO prelims for most of the relays.
Harris could only be on women’s 4Ă—100 free relay.
I don’t see her in any of the mixed relays with McKeon, MOC, Jack being the obvious better choices.
And she’ll definitely not in the 4Ă—200.
And Wilson might bump her out of the 4×100 free relay after her performance in Budapest.
Canada bias but I was surprised it took them that long to figure out that Rebecca Smith and Kat Savard will be on almost every relay and probably get a bunch of silvers.
Yeah the lack of depth basically means anyone on an Aussie relay, Canadian female or English male relay is basically guaranteed a medal
I agree, I also would’ve picked Summer and Maggie before Shayna and Meg
Wasn’t MOC the MVP of the worlds draft?
I thought Torri Huske was.
Why do you keep saying that MOC was the second highest scorer at Worlds? She was literally the highest scorer even without her WR bonus 🤷🏼‍♂️🤷🏼‍♂️
Keep mixing up her and Huske – thanks for the catch, good news for me!
Don’t worry Sub13. They’ll spend 4 weeks after the comm games saying that Huske was the highest scorer in the comm games draft.(and yes I know Huske is not at the comm games) . Coleman has said it at least 3 times and now Ben too. Great pick up for Ben btw
I think they kept saying Huske was the MVP of the worlds draft, which is pretty much true. (MOC scoring one more point but being picked a billion rounds sooner makes Huske the better value pick, therefore, MVP.)
That doesn’t make sense. MVP means MOST VALUABLE PLAYER. Scoring the most points makes you the most valuable. It doesn’t take into account which round you were picked lol. They are definitely using it to mean “most points” but they are just mistaken.
Eh, gotta think of it a little differently in a fantasy scenario because there’s a different value to picking someone in an early round vs a late round. (Like, the Matt Sates scoring 0 points hurt Ben’s team WAY worse than Ramandan’s 0 did to Coleman’s team or Fernando Scheffer’s 0 did to Braden’s because Ben took Sates in the first round, meaning he passed on a bunch of other swimmers that would have scored big points. It’s all about relative value.)
Like, picking Tom Brady in the first round of your draft isn’t gonna win you a league. But picking Lamar Jackson in the last round in 2019 very well could have. Same reason Huske in the last… Read more »
The article literally refers to MOC as “second-highest scorer”. It doesn’t even use the term “MVP”. She isn’t the second highest scorer, she was the highest. You’re talking out of your arse lol
Lol well they done goofed in this post then. (On previous posts I’m almost certain they said Huske was the MVP – which I would agree with! Given my case above.)