Social Kick • Swim Culture & Stories

Heading into the 2023 championship season, the Georgia men’s team looks very different at the top than in 2022. Gone is NCAA and Short Course World Champion Matthew Sates, and following a shoulder injury suffered mid race at the Indianapolis World Cup last fall, the Dawgs are without NCAA & American record holder Luca Urlando. That’s a lot of points to replace, but 2021 NCAA 500 free Champion Jake...

A child of athletes and with close ties to the greatest Australian Olympian ever, Lani Pallister was destined to become a World Champion, a title she earned 4x in 2022 at the World Short Course Swimming Championships in front of a home crowd in Melbourne. Lani Pallister has dealt with a steady stream of setbacks in the past few years: heart surgery, eating disorder, and missing selection to the fa...

Last year Kate Douglass and Alex Walsh won every event they swam at NCAAs. Alex went on to win the World Title in the 200IM last summer, and Kate raked gold medals at the World Short Course championships in December (Alex won her share there too). Superstars of swimming, Kate Douglass and Alex Walsh head into the college championship season ready to carry the momentum into perhaps a 3rd straight c...

The most consistently fast swimming sprinter of all-time, measured by an astounding 100+ swims under 22 seconds in the 50m freestyle long course, Tokyo Olympic Bronze medalist Bruno Fratus shares what he’s up to now. Bruno Fratus has dealt with several shoulder injuries and surgeries throughout his career, and is now almost back to 100% following the latest shoulder surgery; the side effects of tr...

Coming off perhaps the most impressive dual meet performances ever, including Leon Marchand breaking the NCAA 400 IM record, Leon Marchand and Grant House of Arizona State tell us what’s in the water in Tempe that has ASU swimming so fast right now. The Sun Devils are a decade removed from the program being cut and later reinstated - few could have foreseen this success. Legendary Coach Bob Bowman...

As the first man in nearly 100 years to win Olympic medals in the 200, 400, and 1500 freestyle events, which he achieved in Atlanta in 1996, Daniel Kowalski is one of the greatest mid-distance / distance swimmers ever. A star in swimming-crazed Australia, in perhaps the golden era of Australia’s rich swimming history, it would be easy to think that after he won gold on the 4x200m relay at the Sydn...

College championship season is around the corner, so we’re checking in with the teams who will tell the story of conference and NCAA championships in 2023. NC State is looking to build on their 4th place NCAA finish in 2022, led by NCAA 100 backstroke champion and newly minted Short Course World Championship Bronze medalist Kacper Stokowski and 2022 team high-point scorer and Tokyo Olympian Nyls K...

How would you feel if what you love to do most might be taken from you? Christie Raleigh Crossley faced that potential when a traumatic brain injury changed her life forever. An accomplished swimmer with big goals, and a mom to boot, following her injury she returned to the pool with a different set of physical tools and abilities than she once had. But the sport that shaped her life would prove t...

Team USA distance swimmers Charlie Clark and David Johnston know each other well, having raced since juniors and now against the best in the world. Today they join us from Melbourne, Australia ahead of the Short Course World Championships, where they’ll team up and go for a USA 1-2 finish against the likes of Italy’s distance legend Gregorio Paltrinieri. Both are coming off steady progressions to...

After winning so many crowns at the World Cup, Beata Nelson seems to have next year’s Halloween costume dialed. She’s also buying dinner after cashing giant checks worth $150k. But wait, there’s more. Her fiance locked it up with a proposal to cap the month of a lifetime for Beata Nelson, one of the best short course swimmers in the world, maybe in history. And with no more short course meets on t...

Before Magic5, the biggest innovation in goggles was…. goggles.  Niklas Hedegaard is the co-founder of Magic5, the goggle brand featured on Shark Tank that is reimagining fit and performance by leveraging modern facial scanning technology and robotics to deliver personalized goggles custom molded to YOUR face! Finally! No more raccoon eyes or headaches, just comfort, so you can focus on the workou...

Few have achieved success in so many different roles in the sport like Brett Hawke. A 5x Olympian who ushered in an era of Australian sprinting prowess, Brett would have had his place in history when he hung up his suit and goggles as the Aussie record holder, Commonwealth medalist, and Olympic finalist. But things were just beginning, as Brett would go on to coach the greatest sprint group of all...

For many people, “doing a 10k” is an achievement on foot accompanied by a race bib and a finisher t-shirt. For Joe and John Zemaitis, however, it’s a sometimes 3x daily open water swim that takes an average 3 hours to complete! The Swim Brothers recently completed the “Ultimate Swim-a-thon” to raise awareness and money to promote water safety, drowning prevention and competitive and open water swi...

He’s the Olympic Champion, World Record Holder, World Champion and now Commonwealth Champion. Seems like the perfect mic drop moment for a 23 year old to swim like a frog off into the sunset. But while we’ll never understand the stroke, this guy loves swimming fast breaststroke, and he’s keen to take the WR even lower. Somewhat surprisingly, it may be his freestyle training that gives him the fitn...

“Hey Matthew, where’s the fire?” Olympics. Check. World Cup wins. Check. NCAA champ. Check. Goes pro. Check. Sure feels like Matthew Sates’ is on a mission to do it all quickly, and he pretty much has. The past year has been a whirlwind. He’s had 5 different training squads, and now he’s touring more as he learns from the best and makes a plan for his build toward Paris 2024. Why the moves? How fa...

If we could go back and buy stock in Brooks Curry, we’d be rich. Fewer swimmers have a hotter hand right now. Makes Olympic team (wins gold on relay). SEC champ (beats a Dressel meet record). Pulls the double at NCAAs 50/100 free. Earns individual swim at Worlds (makes final, 5th, goes 47). He just keeps getting faster, and is proving time after time to have great swims when it matters most. So, w...

The 50 free is the hardest race in swimming. Why? Details. No room for error. To be the best in the world, training for the 50 means knowing how to truly go ALL OUT. Over and over. Sure, we are biased sprinters. That’s why we asked Kasia Wasick what it takes to win a silver medal at Worlds at age 31 (after 4 Olympics and 1 retirement!). Let’s also give some love to masters swimming for helping Kas...

So many young phenoms burn out, but every so often, one of them becomes a star. After years of breaking national age group records, Carson Foster has arrived at the very top level of elite swimming. Safe to say he has more blue ribbons than anyone in history, but now has his sights set on medals. The World Championships were a breakout meet for Carson, winning silver in both IMs and gold on team U...

For the past two summers, Annie Lazor has delivered dramatic finishes during qualifying at US trials, first by coming 3rd in the 100 breast at Olympic trials, only to turn around and win the 200 breast and go on to earn bronze in Tokyo, then in 2022, finishing 3rd in her signature 200 at World Champs trials and coming back days later to finish 2nd and earn an individual swim in the 100. Talk about...

All athletic careers must come to an end, and frankly, it’s quite an achievement to become so good at swimming that your accomplishments can be summed up as a “career” from which you “retire.” A high school phenom turned Stanford standout and USA National Team member, Grant Shoults’ career had many highlights along with obstacles to overcome. A PAC-12 champion, Stanford record holder, and extra su...

“You just gotta learn how to relax, dude.” Nic Fink may be the coolest cucumber on Team USA, but it wasn’t always that way. Success early in his career set a high bar, leading Nic to put expectations and pressure on himself to perform. After living through the 2016 Trials where he was a favorite to make the Olympic team only to finish 7th, Nic has had a career resurgence of late. He punched his ti...

In this episode, we talk to Ilya Shymanovich, the breaststroke superstar who’s dominated in the short course pool, breaking the World Record multiple times, has close to 40 wins in his ISL career, is the 2021 Short Course World Champion, while also making the Olympic final. Ilya is from Belarus and athletes from Belarus and Russia have been banned from competing at this year’s World Championships...

She’s only 20, and Regan Smith is a Team USA veteran. A 3x Olympic medalist, 2019 World Champion (200 backstroke), and still holds the World Record in that event. Our chat with Regan comes on the heels of her great meet at the US World Championship Trials, where for the 2nd summer in a row she qualified for the US team in the 200 butterfly and 100 backstroke (also the 50 back) and, perhaps surpris...

Fresh off his 5th year at Louisville and a recent round of MBA exams, butterfly star Nick Albiero joins us to chat about taper leading into USA World Championship Trials (his 3rd taper meet in as many months!).    Despite Luke’s best efforts to convince Nick to compete for Brazil (where he has dual citizenship but “can’t speak Portuguese”), Nick is starting his pro swim career and looking to impro...

From practice, to prom, to the podium? Teenage super phenom Claire Curzan joins us to chat about her prep for the upcoming US World Championship Trials. Already an Olympic silver medalist and American record holder, Claire has been carving her name into the record books since she was a kid, and so far in 2022, the theme continues. Claire has dominated the Pro Swim Series with top times in the coun...