A simple internet search for Swimming World Cup soon gets us to this Wiki reference:

"The event is popular with prominent swimmers due to the prize money on offer. In 2022, a total of US$1.2 million was awarded. For each meet the top 20 male and female athletes shared US$224,000 prize money ($112,000 per gender). At the end of the meet series an additional US$262,000 per gender was awarded to the top eight men and women athletes based on their overall ranking using a point score incorporating placings and performance."

Before we consider what "popular" actually means in swimming world-cup context, here's what the relative few of the best of the best take on when weighing up whether they should:

• a. go on World Cup Tour
• b. go in tour intending to have a crack at the prizes on offer for maximum accumulative impact on their bank accounts.

A few related stats:

A sample of three of the biggest single-season all-time earners:

• Katinka Hosszú (2013): $365,000 in prize money
• Kate Douglass (2024): $343,000 in prize money.
• Sarah Sjostrom (2018): $250,000 in prize money.

In 2025, the latest season the headline stats include:

• The Cup featured $1.55 million in total prize money across three stops and the top scoring athletes were
• Hubert Kós: top man, earning of approx. $184,000.
• Kate Douglass: top woman, earning approx. $182,000.
• Lani Pallister: at a single stop, the last one of the 2025 series, she earned approx. $36,000, courtesy of multiple bonuses.

Breakdown of latest Prize-Money Structure - 2025:

• $100,000 bonus for the overall series winner (per gender).
• $10,000 bonus for breaking a World Record.
• $10,000 bonus for a "Triple Crown" (winning the same event at all three stops).
• $12,000 for winning the overall standings at a single stop. 

Swimmers, of course, do not belong to this league, but worth reminding ourselves about the heights of the professional sports universe towering about the pool and casting a massive shadow on the notion of swimming as a professional sport (no, that is not to question anyone's commitment, athlete, coach, sports scientist, parent and more; we're talking about what reward is available/on offer for any commitment made, in any sport).

• Here's a deeper look, including a top 50 paid athletes list that includes no women in any sport, and a feature explaining way, from Forbes.

Consider those figures in the context of the 'worth' and the earning power that World Aquatics is proud to have mustered:

2024 Financial Highlights

• Revenue: a record $107.83 million, largely fuelled by $67.76 million in hosting/commercial revenue and $38.86 million in Olympic movement revenue (as one of the sports in the top tier of IOC recipients).
• Assets: increased to $241.51 million
• Surplus: The net surplus reached $51.17 million, which prompted World Aquatics to announce a new $10 million post-career compensation fund for athletes, eligibility requirements including 'attendance record' at events that carry World Aquatics branding.

So, Ronaldo earns more than the entire sport of swimming put together, while the annual earnings of the top athlete in six sports shown above are greater that the entire revenue of World Aquatics, the regulator that provides the biggest single source of funding for athletes outside private commercial arrangements, a realm in which it is extremely rare for a swimmer to attract anything remotely close to the earnings of the international federation.

Ok, so, this much we knew, but good to lay out to of the pebbles on the shore to laugh or cry over their hue and shape.

There are three key issues to tackle first, the first two as passing mentions this week, for context before we look at the third:

1. The championship format, which means a variation on all of this:

Individual Events (Men & Women)
Freestyle: 50m, 100m, 200m, 400m, 800m, 1500m.
Backstroke: 50m, 100m, 200m.
Breaststroke: 50m, 100m, 200m.
Butterfly: 50m, 100m, 200m.
Medley (IM): [100 s/c], 200m, 400m.

Relay Events
Men: 4x100m freestyle, 4x200m freestyle, 4x100m medley.
Women: 4x100m freestyle, 4x200m freestyle, 4x100m medley.
Mixed: 4x100m freestyle, 4x100m medley.
And 4x50 events at some championships/events

2. The shallow nature of the Cup

As our caption under the main image notes: "Mind The Gap: when Canadian Josh Liendo set sizzling 47.68 World short-course 100m butterfly record at his home round of the Cup in Toronto in October 2025, the podium was a 950-point affair that towered Everest-like over a final that included two swims under 850 and two in the 700s. The time spread in that World Cup top 8 matched a spread of 129 men on the World short–course rankings that same year, a clear indicator of the level of absenteeism at the Cup event, which typically features between 2 and 4 swimmers per final with a strong shot at making a final if the best were all present. Add to that the in-season nature of the Cup, which means that a relative few taper (rest up ready to race at or close to peak form) - having opted to chase the money knowing they have a very good shot at what in swimming are serious sums of money - are racing peer-pace challengers who are unrested, and a whole spectrum of other athletes who are fine swimmers but are not a serious threat to the tapered (or often even untapped) cream-of-the-crop.

That is an all-too-common picture of the unpopularity of the Cup that contrasts with the 'popularity' described in the Wiki reference above without any note on the numbers of top-tier swimmers who simply do not show up for World Cup events. We'll come back to that in part 2 next week.

3. The nature of elite, performance swimming.

It's to that third theme we now turn, the Tao as our guide to understanding.