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The swimming community, whether through SwimSwam or social platforms, can occasionally become an echo chamber. We become enthusiastic about the chance to analyze times, witness live Pro Series competitions that bear no real consequences, and hold the belief that our sport must thrive at any expense. However, immersing oneself too deeply in the swimming world can result in forgetting that individuals outside this realm also have their own perspectives on the sport — and often, it is these outsiders’ views that influence the future of swimming.
This is why, when I came across a post on the r/Olympics subreddit discussing the “unfortunate reality” of swimming, we felt compelled to write about it — as it offers a rare, outside-the-swimming-bubble perspective on why swimming struggles to gain mainstream recognition apart from the Olympic Games.
The reddit post, which has almost 800 upvotes and exceeds 100 comments as of January 7, links to an article from the AI-driven content aggregator website “Essentially Sports.” This piece summarizes a tweet from Villanova University swim coach Rick Simpson regarding swimming’s minimal presence on national television. While it doesn’t convey anything we haven’t previously recognized, the comments on Reddit in response offered some intriguing insights.
Sitting watching Michigan vs. Denver Women’s Gymnastics. Live ESPN 2. 13 year old daughter (swimmer): “I wish swimming was on live like this.” Me: “Yea Me too. But swimming has a lotta growing up to do before you will see that”. @kylesockwell @Braden_Keith pic.twitter.com/Opg5zR6Ljz
— Rick Simpson (@VUSwimCoachRTS) January 5, 2025
For context, r/Olympics boasts around 1.5 million members, with the majority of posts pertaining to the Olympic games or Olympic sports. However, it tends to be a rather inactive subreddit outside of the Games (this is fairly reflective of Olympic sports in general). In the last week alone, there were 34 new posts, with only three posts receiving over 50 comments. In comparison, the significantly smaller r/wnba subreddit, which has about 229,000 members, posted 63 times over the past week, with 13 posts gathering more than 50 comments, even though the league is also currently in the offseason.
While we lack a precise count for r/Olympics, it’s fair to assume that members are more inclined to follow swimming compared to the average individual, though likely less than a SwimSwam reader would.
Swim Meet Organization
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