Michael Phelps, the greatest swimmer of all-time, responded to the news of the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee policy about international athletes on his Instagram story a few days ago.
Phelps posted the SwimSwam Instagram post about the international athletes on his now expired Instagram story with the caption:
“What are our goals? I thrived training w[ith] all athletes. Never discriminated.”
On Tuesday SwimSwam reported that the USOPC would not allow international swimmers to use the United States Olympic and Paralympic Training Center beginning in 2028, and it was reported the following day that the policy would only be in effect for the 2028 Olympic year. He posted the story later in the day on Tuesday.
Phelps swam for Bob Bowman through his career, and Bowman’s pro group at Texas is one of the most notable that is impacted by the policy with Leon Marchand and Summer McIntosh among others calling Austin home.
The University of Texas group just completed a 24-day training trip in Colorado Springs heading into the U.S. Open that saw McIntosh set two U.S. Open records in the 400 free and 200 fly en route to her event wins.
This is not the first public criticism to come out of Phelps in the last few months. He began criticizing USA Swimming during the 2025 World Championships when the American men in particular underperformed after struggling with illness.
Phelps and Ryan Lochte shared a post at the beginning of August that had tombstones with an epitaph for USA Swimming as Phelps asked if it was the “wake up call USA Swimming needed.”
About a week later, he posted a full statement on his Instagram calling for change in the organization, which prompted more USA Swimming alumni to make their own comments.
The news about the USPOTC policy came in response to a question in the SwimSwam podcast with USA Swimming CEO Kevin Ring where he was asked about some of the recent criticism involving international swimmers training in the United States.
And MP doesn’t look ridiculous at all.
With regard to Michael Phelps, the USOPC and USA Swimming should take note of the song lyric, “He can’t even run his own life, I’ll be damned if he’ll run mine.”
The past 10 years have seen the slow decline of swimming in the USA. Like it or not, funding, donations, and participation gains come from Americans winning gold medals at the Olympics. Helping Leon, Summer, and other international swimmers get faster and dominate is a net-negative for USA Swimming. No one outside of the swimming community could name a famous (and currently competing) American swimmer other than Katie Ledecky. That is an enormous problem for swimming in the USA. I personally love to watch any fast swimming, but I also realize that 99% of the population just wants to see Americans winning gold medals, and that’s where the funding comes from.
You don’t watch very much, clearly
Phelps discriminates on Lactic acid.
Hope the land of Australia excludes all backpackers from Queensland swimming pools sooner rather than later. Lane space and the perception of the kangaroo country internationally based on standing in medal tally needs to improve before 32.
The training facility doesn’t make the swimmer; the swimmer does. To suggest that world-class talent like Marchand, McIntosh or Kos will be disadvantaged at the 2028 Olympics or anywhere else just because they won’t be able to train in Colorado that year is fatuous.
No, but the American swimmers in their training group can go to the OTC for free and the foreign athletes could pay to go to the same place and have their coach there. Now their coaches are going to have to decide if it’s better to ask the American athletes to pay to go to NAU so they can actually coach all of their athletes together, or have their foreign athletes head off on their own.
Interesting choice of picture on this article. Phelps with the greatest American coach of all time. Also that Bowman got the job when Eddie retired, is recruiting far more international swimmers than Eddie ever did, etc.
Hilarious how it works huh
Bowman is the anti-Eddie.
People seem to forget that Eddie had foreign swimmers on the team for many years, one of the most notable being the one who beat Phelps in 2016. I believe Eddie did a stint as Singapore’s Olympic swim coach so that he could be at the Olympics for his swimmers without having to do the lengthy training camp with the US team (he was about 75 at the time). I could be wrong, and Braden and company will hopefully correct me if I am, but I believe in SwimSwam’s foreign swimmer breakdown in NCAA swimming this year, more of the foreign swimmers on the Texas mens team were from Eddie’s time than from Bob’s. Bob’s swimmers are just more notable… Read more »
3 of the 5 are Bowman additions, 2 of the 5 are Eddie swimmers.
(Also 5 is way fewer than I would’ve expected – speaking to your point about them being high profile and carrying outsized space in our collective consciousness).
4 internationals that we know of for 2026. So, definitely ramping up international recruiting, which Bob was always going to do more of than Eddie…but we also have to recognize that Bob is operating in a different environment than Eddie was.
Thanks for checking.
We seem to just love to hate Bob, and I’m fine with that if you have legitimate reasons. But people on here putting things on Bob and acting like Ed never did any of those things kind of drives me crazy. Eddie really is a good guy, and he was about mentoring good human beings while helping them become better swimmers. I once introduced him to a group as the top life coach at Texas athletics. But Ed will also have told some jokes that surprised you. Or let some athletes get away with something because they were really fast. Ed often had foreign athletes. I’m not trying to tear Ed down. He’d be worthy of… Read more »
Very simple. The goal is fear-based discrimination and exclusion. Nobody should have been dense enough to believe swimming wouldn’t get involved. The photo of this new CEO depicts the demographic that cherishes the practice.
Yeah, they hand out some cash as deflective measure.