The Olympic swim meet has reached the point where it’s safe to begin drawing some broad conclusions about what has gone on in the world’s strongest swimming countries the past five years. Any conversation on the subject has to begin with the United States, which has dominated swimming for decades and during Michael Phelps’s career widened the gap with Australia, the world’s other force in international swimming. The Americans’ great meet continued on Friday morning. They had captured 24 medals overall heading into the final three days of competition, compared with 14 for swimming-mad Australia, which, it should be noted, has about one-tenth the population of the United States. The United States most likely match its high-water mark of 2016, when the team won 34 medals, 16 of the gold, but it should get within spitting distance of that total.

Source: International New York Times July 30, 2021 01:18 UTC