With our Top 100 For 2022 series coming to a close, it’s time to revisit the rankings as we look ahead to a fast year of swimming.
While it appears as though there won’t be another World Championship meet until July 2023, the rankings were put together prior to this announcement and reflect where we would rank swimmers assuming there would be a best-on-best competition this year.
On the women’s side, Katie Ledecky earned the #1 spot on our list, with a trio of Aussies closely behind.
See the full lists:
Check out the Top 100 Women For 2022 below:
| Ranking | Swimmer | Country |
| 1 | Katie Ledecky | USA |
| 2 | Kaylee McKeown | Australia |
| 3 | Ariarne Titmus | Australia |
| 4 | Emma McKeon | Australia |
| 5 | Zhang Yufei | China |
| 6 | Tatjana Schoenmaker | South Africa |
| 7 | Yui Ohashi | Japan |
| 8 | Maggie MacNeil | Canada |
| 9 | Siobhan Haughey | Hong Kong |
| 10 | Sarah Sjostrom | Sweden |
| 11 | Regan Smith | USA |
| 12 | Lilly King | USA |
| 13 | Kylie Masse | Canada |
| 14 | Hali Flickinger | USA |
| 15 | Lydia Jacoby | USA |
| 16 | Penny Oleksiak | Canada |
| 17 | Sydney Pickrem | Canada |
| 18 | Alex Walsh | USA |
| 19 | Kate Douglass | USA |
| 20 | Simona Quadarella | Italy |
| 21 | Torri Huske | USA |
| 22 | Evgeniia Chikunova | Russia |
| 23 | Li Bingjie | China |
| 24 | Summer McIntosh | Canada |
| 25 | Benedetta Pilato | Italy |
| 26 | Claire Curzan | USA |
| 27 | Yang Junxuan | China |
| 28 | Ranomi Kromowidjojo | Netherlands |
| 29 | Cate Campbell | Australia |
| 30 | Erica Sullivan | USA |
| 31 | Emma Weyant | USA |
| 32 | Abbie Wood | Great Britain |
| 33 | Louise Hansson | Sweden |
| 34 | Annie Lazor | USA |
| 35 | Wang Jianjiahe | China |
| 36 | Rhyan White | USA |
| 37 | Kira Toussaint | Netherlands |
| 38 | Yu Yiting | China |
| 39 | Katie Grimes | USA |
| 40 | Anastasia Kirpichnikova | Russia |
| 41 | Sarah Kohler | Germany |
| 42 | Margherita Panziera | Italy |
| 43 | Sophie Hansson | Sweden |
| 44 | Anastasia Gorbenko | Israel |
| 45 | Erika Fairweather | New Zealand |
| 46 | Kelsi Dahlia | USA |
| 47 | Olivia Smoliga | USA |
| 48 | Madison Wilson | Australia |
| 49 | Anastasiya Shkurdai | Belarus |
| 50 | Abbey Weitzeil | USA |
| 51 | Arianna Castiglioni | Italy |
| 52 | Barbora Seemanova | Czech Republic |
| 53 | Boglarka Kapas | Hungary |
| 54 | Simone Manuel | USA |
| 55 | Ingrid Wilm | Canada |
| 56 | Minna Atherton | Australia |
| 57 | Mollie O’Callaghan | Australia |
| 58 | Kathleen Dawson | Great Britain |
| 59 | Marie Wattel | France |
| 60 | Beryl Gastaldello | France |
| 61 | Phoebe Bacon | USA |
| 62 | Beata Nelson | USA |
| 63 | Emily Seebohm | Australia |
| 64 | Paige Madden | USA |
| 65 | Kayla Sanchez | Canada |
| 66 | Freya Anderson | Great Britain |
| 67 | Katinka Hosszu | Hungary |
| 68 | Taylor Ruck | Canada |
| 69 | Pernille Blume | Denmark |
| 70 | Molly Renshaw | Great Britain |
| 71 | Erika Brown | USA |
| 72 | Anna Hopkin | Great Britain |
| 73 | Maria Kameneva | Russia |
| 74 | Katharine Berkoff | USA |
| 75 | Martina Carraro | Italy |
| 76 | Svetlana Chimrova | Russia |
| 77 | Leah Smith | USA |
| 78 | Melanie Henique | France |
| 79 | Tang Qianting | China |
| 80 | Emily Escobedo | USA |
| 81 | Merve Tuncel | Turkey |
| 82 | Rebecca Smith | Canada |
| 83 | Rikako Ikee | Japan |
| 84 | Ajna Kesely | Hungary |
| 85 | Yuliya Efimova | Russia |
| 86 | Tessa Cieplucha | Canada |
| 87 | Bailey Andison | Canada |
| 88 | Maddy Gough | Australia |
| 89 | Lana Pudar |
Bosnia and Herzegovina
|
| 90 | Eneli Jefimova | Estonia |
| 91 | Katie Shanahan | Great Britain |
| 92 | Elizabeth Dekkers | Australia |
| 93 | Anna Ntountounaki | Greece |
| 94 | Tang Muhan | China |
| 95 | Meg Harris | Australia |
| 96 | Yu Liyan | China |
| 97 | Kelsey Wog | Canada |
| 98 | Mary-Sophie Harvey | Canada |
| 99 | Ellen Walshe | Ireland |
| 100 | Arina Surkova | Russia |
Emma Mackeon will blow Katie and Arien into tumble weed come any form of Competition. Emma will become the greatest Australian swimmer of all time. The womens 100m and 50m just need to be adjusted to reflect Emma’s greatness. Who makes these observations that Emma Mackeon is not the true Queen of the pool. The100m butterfly is her event, now she has strength and speed.
I think Ariarne should be #1 as she has broke Katie’s world record last night. In my opinion she is much better
Other comment in approval queue so trying again:
Just a reminder that Erika Brown is ranked above Anna Hopkin, Meg Harris and Bronte Campbell (who wasn’t even on the list).
All three of them beat her in the only event she swims, all three of them swam faster relay splits and all three of them are gold medalists.
Literally the dumbest ranking on the whole list that can’t possibly be anything other than American bias.
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Now that there is no world championship and no international meet for USA, will Swimswam update this list.
Other countries such as Australia will still have Commonwealth Games and will no doubt make a power move on the world ranking and records.
If you compare last year’s list with the actual achievement, they got SO MUCH wrong. So I would expect that they will just leave the list like this and be wrong again.
Of course an American on top of the list.. surprise surprise swimswam .. nice algorithm concocted to come up with that result
Shouldn’t Titmus, McKeon and Mckeown all be ahead of Ledecky based off of their performances from Tokyo. All respect to Ledecky but I mean McKeon came away with 7 medals, Titmus and Mckewon came away with 4 (same as Ledecky) but Titmus won 2/3 head-to-heads against ledecky and Mckewon set a WR in 2021. I think at least McKeon and Titmus would be ranked higher. I think both King and Masse should be ahead of smitth based off of Olympic and ISL performance
Yeah well Emma got world swimmer of the year that’s all that counts, and a record 7 medals in tokyo. She also won a MA in Australia The Aussie girls swim team in Tokyo were undoubtedly the World number one team,
This list is about expected results in 2022 solely on individual potential and not necessarily based on achievement from last year (whether it’s fair to exclude relays altogether is an interesting question). So if you take out the relays, McKeon makes sense in 4th. I agree that McKeown and Titmus should be ahead of Ledecky though.
There’s no World championship and no international meet in 2022 for American swimmers, including ledecky.
Australia will have Commonwealth Games.
Using your logic and Swimswam logic, Shouldn’t McKeown, Titmus, and McKeon be ahead of ledecky?
These lists were made before that announcement. If we’re taking that into account, I would go McKeown, Titmus, Ledecky then McKeon.
But yes, if they update the lists to consider zero World champs then really no Americans should be in the top 30 of either list.
I think Kelsi Dahlia should be top ten, Although she like Ledecky will not be swimming any International events this year, Maybe the Commonweaalth Games will have a few World Records with Australia Canada South Africa England Scotland etc!
You say Kelsi Dahlia should be top ten with no explanation, and then point out she won’t even be competing this year. What?