U.S. swimmers hear the criticism, even as they finish on top at worlds
It was the middle of the night in Singapore, Friday giving way to Saturday, when the caustic Instagram story began making its way around the American swim community. For the bulk of the athletes representing Team USA at the world swimming championships, the haunting image would be awaiting them on their phones on the morning of the meet’s penultimate day:
A tombstone reading: “IN LOVING MEMORY OF UNITED STATES SWIMMING, 1980-2025, AGED 45. They set the bar high — until they stopped reaching for it.” The Instagram user who posted it added some text: “Is this the wake-up call USA Swimming needed? Let’s find out …” Another user who reposted the meme added: “Call it a funeral, or call it a fresh start. We’ve got 3 years.”
Because of the identities of the Instagram users in question — original poster Ryan Lochte and re-poster Michael Phelps, American legends who own a combined 40 Olympic medals — the current members of Team USA would spend much of the remainder of the Singapore meet trying to respond to the criticism with both their words and their performances.
And so, for Team USA, Sunday’s final race of the world championships carried more than the typical amount of meaning. A quartet of American women — Regan Smith (backstroke), Kate Douglass (breaststroke), Gretchen Walsh (butterfly) and Torri Huske (freestyle) — trounced the field in the women’s 4x100-meter medley relay in a world record time of 3 minutes 49.34 seconds to take the gold medal. It was the Americans’ ninth gold medal and 29th overall of the meet, clinching their place atop the medal standings over Australia (eight golds, 20 overall).
“I think that this not only sends a message to the rest of the world, but also a message within our team,” Huske told reporters in Singapore at the end of a meet in which she won two golds, a silver and a bronze to boost her career total to 14 world championships medals. “We’re the only ones who really know what we went through and how awful it was. … The fact that we were able to overcome as much as we did, is, I think, inspiring.”
American sprint star Jack Alexy echoed those comments soon after leading Team USA to a bronze medal finish in the men’s 4x100 medley relay with a sizzling anchor leg. “We definitely heard about [the Instagram meme], and that’s really disappointing. … There’s a standard of excellence for this team, and when we don’t meet that standard there’s going to be some criticisms, and that just motivates us for the future. I think it fired us up a little bit, and it’s going to motivate us for the future.”
But as the members of Team USA, and especially its leadership, head into a well-deserved summer break, the sharp criticism from Phelps and Lochte — which seemed to be directed more at the powers behind USA Swimming than the athletes themselves — will be almost impossible to shake, having all but defined the narrative ahead of the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles.
“The most important three years in the history of this sport are upon us,” NBC’s lead swimming announcer, three-time Olympic gold medalist Rowdy Gaines, said on Sunday’s Peacock telecast. “And there is no time to waste.” Earlier, Gaines pointed to the fact that USA Swimming has been without a CEO for almost a full year, and said the organization was “rudderless” and in need of a “complete reset.”
For Team USA, the 2025 world championship meet will be remembered for the stomach bug that churned through the majority of the team, leading to late scratches, relay substitutions and some lackluster performances — all of which undoubtedly affected the team’s final medal count.
“We’ve been through a lot,” Greg Meehan, USA Swimming’s newly hired national team director, told Peacock, in comments that seemed at least somewhat directed toward Phelps and Lochte. “Nobody really understands what the group has been through unless you’re on this trip. The challenges were incredible. When you have people losing 15 pounds, 20 pounds, that’s a lot. And they have persevered. They’re just a really tough group. They didn’t let [the viral Instagram story] drive the narrative internally as a team.”
The meet will also be remembered for a handful of transcendent performances, highlighted by freestyle legend Katie Ledecky taking gold medals in the 1,500 and 800, plus two other medals, giving her 23 golds and 30 overall medals in world championships, trailing only Phelps.
But the meet was also a sobering reminder of how close the gap has become between the once-dominant Team USA and the rest of the world. One illustration is the fact that the best all-around female and male swimmers in the world — Summer McIntosh (Canada) and Léon Marchand (France) — compete for other countries, though they will also spend the next three years, ahead of Los Angeles 2028, training at the University of Texas under Bob Bowman, best known as Phelps’s longtime coach.
McIntosh, who this year announced her plans to join Bowman’s UT-Austin pro group in the fall, won four individual medals in Singapore, with only a hard-fought loss to Ledecky in the 800 free keeping her from joining Phelps as the only swimmers in history with five individual golds at a world championships. Marchand, meanwhile, easily won both the 200 and 400 individual medleys, races he also won at the 2024 Paris Games.
Meanwhile, in unprecedented times in this meet, Team USA failed to place a swimmer in the finals of an event. Only one American male swimmer, Luca Urlando in the 200 fly, won an individual gold, matching the total from Paris 2024.
Asked where he will be seeking improvement between now and Los Angeles 2028, Meehan told Peacock: “Everything. Even events we’re really good at, we can’t get complacent. … The rest of the world is getting better. We’re really going to take a 360-degree look at all our events. This is our starting point, and I’m really excited about how we’ve done here given all we’ve gone through.”