Should Swimmers be Allowed to Swim in the Same Lane During a Race?

Tunisian swimmer Ahmed Hafnaoui, the reigning Olympic gold medalist in the 400 freestyle, will not be competing at the upcoming 2024 Paris Olympics. According to Africa Aquatics, this news was revealed by Tunisian Olympic Committee head Mehrez Bousyan on a televised sports program and had also been confirmed by Hafnaoui himself.

Olympic and world champion Kyle Chalmers just had one of the best in-season meets of his career last month at the Australian Open, going lifetime bests in the 50 free (21.9) and 50 fly (23.1) as well as a 47.6 in the 100 free. This is coming on the heels of moving clubs to train with Ash Delaney at St. Andrews on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland.

This week on the SwimSwam Breakdown, we discuss Summer McIntosh's potential lineup for the 2024 Canadian Olympic Trials, a high school swim team getting locked out of their section meet, and the major moves that have happened so far in the NCAA off-season.

During the 2024 Polish Swimming Championships (which qualify swimmers for the 2024 Olympics in Paris this summer), a swimmer in the Women's 200 IM final ended up in the wrong lane halfway through the race and ended up getting disqualified for it. We discuss how this happened, why it was a DQ, and what questions this raises about the rules for this race.

SwimSwam Co-Founders Braden Keith (Editor-in-Chief) and Mel Stewart (CEO) sit down to divulge how the story of 23 Chinese swimmers testing positive and walking away unscathed unfolded over the weekend and what it means moving forward. Stewart and Keith discuss USADA's role in breaking this story, what WADA's independent investigation could bring to light, and the plausibility that this was actually caused by a contaminated kitchen vs intentional doping.

2x Olympic Champion and now 3x British Olympian James Guy spoke with SwimSwam after it came to light over the weekend that 23 Chinese swimmers had tested positive for TMZ in January of 2021. Early in the week, Guy had tweeted "Ban them all and never compete again" and expressed similar frustration today, namely in WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) for allowing such a situation to occur.

On Friday, April 19, sources told SwimSwam that the gold-medal-winning Chinese women's 800 Free Relay from the Tokyo Olympics would be disqualified and that the silver-medal USA women's team would be bumped up to gold. The next morning, the Herald Sun reported that 23 Chinese swimmers had tested positive for TMZ in January of 2021 at a training camp, just a few months before the Tokyo Olympic Games. Many of those athletes went on to win medals in Tokyo. No one had heard about this until now.

Brendan Burns is coming off of a career NCAA performance where he not only defended his NCAA title in the 100 back but also made 3 NCAA A finals for the first time. Burns reflects on his time as an Indiana Hoosier and what's next for him in and out of the pool.

Today on the SwimSwam Breakdown, we discuss the myriad of high-level meets that occurred last week, including the Pro Swim in San Antonio, the Canadian Open, and South African Trials.

Daniel Roy was a 5 time All-American at Stanford, where he holds the team record in the 200 breast. He was the 2017 Junior World Champion in the 200 breast. In mid-March at the Federal Way Sectionals, just two and a half months into his comeback, he dropped at 2:09.57 which places his 7th in the world in the 200 breast this year.