Interactive Maps: 2024 U.S. Olympic Team By Training Base, Hometown, and 2023 Focus Meet
By Sophie Kaufman on SwimSwam
2024 PARIS SUMMER OLYMPIC GAMES
Pool Swimming: July 27 – August 4, 2024
Open Water Swimming: August 8 – 9, 2024
La Défense Arena — Paris, France
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U.S. Olympic Trials have come and gone, but don’t fret, we’re here to reduce that post-meet boredom and gear up for the Paris Olympics, which kick off in less than two weeks. In this article, we’re breaking down the U.S. Olympic roster into a series of interactive maps you can browse as you while away the days until the opening ceremony.
1. Where was the U.S. Olympic Team Racing A Year Ago?
The 2023 U.S. Nationals served as a huge selection meet. Not only were swimmers qualifying for Worlds, but the meet was a chance to gain a roster spot at the 2023 LEN U23 European Championships, World Junior Championships, and Pan American Games. This map serves as a way to chart where swimmers spent their summer swimming after Indianapolis. If a swimmer swam at U.S. Nationals but did not qualify for another team, they count towards the U.S. Nationals count, even if they also swam at the U.S. Pro Champs later that summer.
All but three swimmers on the U.S. Olympic team raced at 2023 U.S. Nationals. The exceptions are Simone Manuel, Blake Pieroni, and Luca Urlando, all of whom were on a comeback trail of sorts last season. Meanwhile, the overwhelming majority of swimmers headed to Paris qualified to race in Fukuoka last summer. There are outliers though; Aaron Shackell was at LEN U23 European Championships, Luke Whitlock went to World Juniors, and Keaton Jones swam at World University Games. Emma Weber, who originally bought a spectator ticket to the Olympics, raced at Pan Ams with Paige Madden and Brooks Curry.
The only swimmer on the U.S. Olympic roster who did not feature at any of these meets last summer is open water swimmer Ivan Puskovitch. The other open water-only swimmer on the roster, Mariah Denigan, raced at U.S. Nationals.
2. Where Do They Train?
University of Texas leads the way as the top training site for the U.S Olympic roster, with eight swimmers calling Austin their base. Of course, this gets a bit more complicated by the fact that prior to Trials, there were three groups training at the Texas’ complex: Carol Capitani‘s women’s program, Eddie Reese‘s crew, and the newly hired Director of Swimming Bob Bowman‘s group. Since we’re counting by site, we’ve counted all the swimmers–regardless of coach–as one Texas contingent.
The other piece of the Texas issue that’s a challenge to track is exactly who followed Bowman to Austin from Tempe. Bowman’s pro group did a stint at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in the spring, then some swimmers continued to Austin. SwimSwam has confirmed that neither Luca Urlando nor Simone Manuel trained in Austin. Urlando, who recently announced he would return to the NCAA and UGA, went to train with his club team in California and Manuel swam in Tempe for the last three weeks leading up to Trials. Bowman certainly played a role in their development over the last Olympic cycle, but again since we’re counting by site, they do not contribute to the Texas total.
Cal Berkeley checks in with six swimmers on the U.S. roster, the second highest number for a training site. Abbey Weitzeil is their lone representative on the women’s side and they got their usual boost from the backstroke events on the men’s side: Cal swimmers make up 100% of the men’s backstroke roster spots with Ryan Murphy qualifying in both events, Hunter Armstrong making the 100, and Keaton Jones the 200.
Indiana, Florida, and Virginia are all sending five representatives on the U.S. roster.
And if it’s hard for you to find Thomas Heilman‘s dot, that’s because the Cavalier Aquatics/Piedmont Family Y team train in Charlottesville, Virginia–the same town as the University of Virginia, which overwhelms Heilman’s dot with their five representatives.
3. Where Are They From?
Data for this visualization is based on what each swimmer listed as their hometown on the 2024 U.S. Olympic roster. Indiana, the host state for U.S. Olympic Trials, is well represented with six swimmers on the Olympic team. Half of the Indiana contingent hails from Carmel as Aaron Shackell, Alex Shackell, and Drew Kibler all call it home. Kibler is also the only Indiana-born swimmer to currently train out of state, though he did briefly return to Carmel Swimming, his club team.
Other states with multiple swimmers on the roster are California, Florida, Texas, Virginia, Tennessee, New York, Nevada, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland. Though Maryland’s three representatives Katie Ledecky, Erin Gemmell, and Phoebe Bacon list different hometowns, they all swam at the same high school, Stone Ridge, which would give the school a decent sized dot on the training site map if they all still trained there.
Read the full story on SwimSwam: Interactive Maps: 2024 U.S. Olympic Team By Training Base, Hometown, and 2023 Focus Meet
