FORUM - Has Swimming Lost Its Lore & Love of Storytelling?
"People are not interested in swimming ... they're interested in swimmers". So said Buck Dawson 40 years ago. In 2026, swimming is still treading water in its niche pool between Olympic Heights, with no pro-sports economy to speak of. What's gone wrong & how can swimming spread its song of swimmers?
THEMA: Selling Swimming Beyond The Swim
Steven Spielberg once said: "People have forgotten how to tell a story. Stories don’t have a middle or an end anymore. They usually have a beginning that never stops beginning."
Whatever context he was speaking to, it's all too easy to apply his thought and many others in debates about 'the slow death of storytelling' to swimming's struggle to keep its head above water in between Olympic high tides.
I hadn't planned to writer at length on storytelling and how swimming or swimmers tell their story but on reflection, it's a theme a wise reader reminded me of in the past week, and a chapter in our mini-series that finds a natural home as part 4 in our latest FORUM mini-series, counting backwards:
Part 3
Craig Lord
Part 2
Craig Lord
Part 1
Craig Lord
Recent examples of swimming stories than had much more to tell us about swimmers than their swimming alone and yet went untold beyond their proverbial backyard pool include:
- a dream-duel, head-to-head between Katie Ledecky Vs Summer McIntosh at a meet in the U.S.,
- a handful of season-shaping efforts at the opening round of Monaco's Monte Carlo round of the Mare Nostrum tour this past weekend
- the latest AP Race project in London this past weekend
- Missy Franklin's recent revelations about depression and other challenges that spill from performance sport and and, in part, how it manages (or not) transition to the rest of life; and even...
- Léon Marchand and what he might swim at a home Europeans back in Paris come August in the first summer season void of a World long-course showcase since 2021.
All of the above got not much more than a handful of articles in mainstream media (nor did international federations do anything to promote any of it, perhaps because none of it is 'our event', as opposed to considering a 'your sport - our sport' approach). At the same time, the mainstream Enhanced Games coverage runs to hundreds of features in the past week, most of them since the event was held in Las Vegas on Sunday.
The vast majority of those articles, it was heartening to see, concluded that the whole thing was a pumped-up flop. I didn't watch live, having genuinely no interest in following athletes on drugs sprint up and down a pool and pretend they're something they are not, including 'fastest human in water' (that would need 'enhanced' in the sentence and that would also have to place fin swimmers top of the ranks, at least until someone fires a bloke in bathers from a canon towards a net and thick landing pad at the end of the lane, perhaps, just in case).
The clips I have seen since the flop ended - coupled with comments from athletes who ought to know better that to let their sprinters' peacockery hoist them win their own petard - came across as a doping game for folk being paid lots of money to promote a highly questionable concept that staggered an event neither entertaining nor impressive, even if you could overlook the drugs, the suits and the other stuff that made the whole thing irrelevant to the Olympic swimming realm.
Comparison with the tested efforts of the likes of Cameron McEvoy are ludicrously daft and unworkable.
That's the kind of storytelling and 'showtime' swimming can do without.
Of course, whatever is missing from mainstream media of other swim events and stories may cause you no alarm these days. After all, this is the digital era and traditional media has been replaced, has it not, in the form of in-house reports, PR, blogs, vlogs, niche takes and the like.
Well, no. I beg to differ. And yes, it matters, if you want the kind of growth that will create a true economy and wage-paying pro-sport culture and work environment for swimmers - and coaches.
So, why is swimming struggling to tell its story in an era in which federations and swimmers have direct access to audiences and fans through social media and related platforms?
Forget all the fan clicks, follows, likes, shares and other counts that give the impression of massive interest, for those things can be found in every sport you care to mention these days, and do very little to build said economy, let alone a crowd beyond the folk already tuning in.
Here's a point I've made several times before but am more than happy to do so again. As a question, it goes like this: what have all the sports above swimming on the ranking of popularity (with size of economy and audience, value of the league of sponsors, partners and reach beyond the sport itself to lifestyle, in the mix), got that swimming does not?
'Answers on a postcard' welcome at craig.lord@stateofswimming.com for anyone who thinks the following needs expanding on. My top five takes follow, along with a look at the nature of storytelling and swimming's relationship with the art down the decades:
- a constant mainstream media following and regular coverage that provides the meat, cheese and chutney of regular storytelling in between the broadcasts that feed the live action out beyond vast crowds watching live in venues (in combined numbers swimming can only dream of in between Olympics to fans) to the wider world audience on a regular basis.
- set seasons with specific season-long goals, specific events in league or championships, and simple formats that anyone can follow, not only fans
