Team USA Set to Open FINA World Championships (25m) Tuesday
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HANGZHOU, China – With a talented roster featuring 18 Olympians and 13 Olympic champions, USA Swimming will open the 2018 FINA World Swimming Championships (25m) on Tuesday at the Hangzhou Olympic and International Expo Center.
According to FINA, more than 960 swimmers representing 178 countries are slated to compete.
In the United States, live coverage from Hangzhou will air daily Tuesday through Thursday on the Olympic Channel at 6 a.m. EST, followed by a delayed same-day broadcast on NBC Sports Network. Friday through Sunday, same-day delay coverage will be carried by the Olympic Channel and NBC Sports Network.
Team USA headliners include Olympic champions and current long-course backstroke world record-holders Kathleen Baker (Winston-Salem, N.C./Team Elite/Cal) and Ryan Murphy (Jacksonville, Fla./California Aquatics), as well as Olympic gold medalist and seven-time world champion Caeleb Dressel (Green Cove Springs, Fla./Bolles School Sharks/Florida) and 2012 Olympic 100-meter back champion Matt Grevers (Lake Forest, Ill./Tucson Ford Dealers Aquatics).
Grevers is making his team-high fourth FINA World Championships (25m) appearance dating to 2006. Eleven members of the successful U.S. contingent from the 2016 event in Windsor, Canada, return. That group topped the medal table with 30 total medals, double that of runner-up Japan’s 15.
Baker joins Michael Andrew (Lawrence, Kan./Race Pace Club) with a team-high five individual event entries, while Dressel and Olympic medalist Leah Smith (Pittsburgh, Pa./Tucson Ford Dealers Aquatics) follow with four individual entries apiece. Andrew and Smith are two of eight competing swimmers who currently hold 12 American short-course meters records.
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