U.S. swim crew coping with ‘acute gastroenteritis’ at world championships

The U.S. swimming crew is coping with a bout of “acute gastroenteritis” on the world championships in Singapore, a spokesperson for USA Swimming confirmed Sunday, that started at a latest coaching camp and is now impacting the competitors.

The crew held a coaching camp in Phuket, Thailand, the place the sickness — generally often called the abdomen flu — started, earlier than touring to Singapore final week. It was not clear how a lot of the crew was impacted, however a number of U.S. swimmers both have been pulled from races or noticeably struggled on the primary day of competitors.

Gretchen Walsh was a shock late scratch from the ladies’s 4×100-meter freestyle relay last Sunday. She had posted the highest time within the 100-meter butterfly semifinals earlier within the day however was then pulled from the relay and changed by Erin Gemmell. USA Swimming confirmed the transfer was “illness related.”

Walsh competed within the relay finally yr’s Paris Olympics, posting the Americans’ second-fastest time of their silver-medal run within the last. She was additionally on the silver-medal crew on the 2023 world championships.

Without Walsh, the U.S. crew of Simone Manuel, Kate Douglass, Gemmell and Torri Huske completed second to Australia in a good race Sunday. Australia gained in 3:30.60, with the Americans ending in 3:31.04. It was Australia’s fourth world title within the final 5 tries at worlds, solely lacking out on the 2024 version that a number of prime swimmers skipped forward of the Olympics.

Huske, 22, swam the relay regardless of being pulled from the 100-meter butterfly heats earlier within the day. Huske gained gold in that occasion in Paris.

Claire Weinstein, 18, was pulled from the 400-meter freestyle heats. She was a part of the Americans’ silver-medal crew within the 4×200-meter freestyle relay in Paris and is without doubt one of the world’s prime 400-meter swimmers.

Luca Mijatovic — at 16, the youngest American males’s swimmer to compete on the world championships since Michael Phelps in 2001 — completed thirty sixth in his heats for the lads’s 400-meter freestyle in a time of three:59.68, virtually 14 seconds off his time from the U.S. nationwide championships in June. There, he set nationwide age-group data within the 200- and 400-meter freestyles — even besting the 17- and 18-year-old group document occasions.

Katie Ledecky, the 28-year-old with extra Olympic and world championship medals than any girls’s swimmer, competed as scheduled in her 400-meter freestyle heats and last. She took bronze behind Canada’s Summer McIntosh and China’s Li Bingjie.

(Photo of Gretchen Walsh competing within the 100-meter butterfly heats Sunday at world championships: Quinn Rooney / Getty Images)