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The swimming events at the 2024 Paris Olympics begin almost exactly eight months from today — on July 27, to be precise. In the meantime, there aren’t many opportunities to see top medal contenders compete against each other.
Due to scheduling kinks caused by the pandemic, there’s a world championships coming up in February in Doha. But the big names are laser-focused on the Olympics, so don’t expect to see them there. That includes Canadian stars Summer McIntosh, Penny Oleksiak, Maggie Mac Neil, Kylie Masse and Josh Liendo, who are all skipping the worlds. In announcing its roster earlier this month, Swimming Canada identified its leading athlete as Katerine Savard, a solid but unspectacular veteran who has never won an individual medal at the Olympics or the world championships.
There’s no question that the depleted entry list has taken the juice out of the upcoming worlds. But swimming fans looking to see some of the world’s biggest stars in action before Paris can turn to this week’s U.S. Open Swimming Championships.
WATCH | McIntosh defends women’s 400m IM world title with championship-record time:
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Featured VideoToronto teenager Summer McIntosh easily wins gold in the women’s 400 individual medley with a championship record of 4:27.11.
Taking place Wednesday through Saturday in Greensboro, N.C., the meet will feature most of the best Americans, including distance GOAT Katie Ledecky and seven-time Olympic gold medallist Caeleb Dressel. Plus, international stars like McIntosh and France’s Leon Marchand, who won a combined five individual golds at this year’s world championships in Japan.
Canada’s Penny Oleksiak is scheduled for one event, the women’s 100-metre freestyle, as the seven-time Olympic medallist continues to make her way back from a 2022 knee surgery and subsequent shoulder injury that conspired to keep her out of this year’s worlds. Other top Canadians in the field include Josh Liendo, who captured his third solo world-championship medal this year with a silver in the men’s 100m butterfly; and Ilya Kharun, an 18-year-old rising star who missed the men’s 200m butterfly podium by just 0.16 of a second.
McIntosh signed up for five events at the U.S. Open, though it remains to be seen how many she’ll actually do. Swimming fans are hoping for another 400m freestyle showdown between the young Canadian star and Ledecky. In 2022, the American held off McIntosh to win her fourth world title in the event. At this year’s world championships, they both lost to Australia’s Ariarne Titmus, who broke McIntosh’s world record while the Canadian finished a disappointing fourth and Ledecky took silver. Titmus is not competing in Greensboro.
Read more about the U.S. Open meet in this story from SwimSwam. See the full entry sheet here.