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Kate Douglass and Leon Marchand walked away with $100,000 bonuses for leading the points standings at the 2024 World Cup. Archive photo via Jack Spitser/Spitser Photography
Ayden Tan moves up the boys’ 11-12 age group all-time rankings in stacked college-style dual meet between the Crow Canyon Sharks and Mission Viejo Nadadores.
This week on the SwimSwam Breakdown, we are discussing the World Cup, the Texas vs Indiana Dual Meet, and Michael Andrew training at Arizona State.
World Aquatics SCM Swimming World Cup season has offered a fresh perspective on the intrinsic value and significance of these competitions
The 2023 World Championships in Fukuoka were very successful for World Aquatics, generating $59 million in revenue to help push them to an operating surplus.
Il nuoto italiano si prepara a vivere un momento denso di emozioni e tradizione con la cinquantesima edizione del Trofeo Internazionale Nico Sapio
Greer Middle College boys Maddex Ternes and Jimmy Beeson won gold and broke a school record in every event they swam, sweeping the state title.
Junior Pan Pacs medallist Oliver Dawson broke onto the national Canadian breaststroke scene this summer and has now committed to Indiana’s class of 2030.
The Bishop England High School girls team swept their division, as the South Aiken boys just out-touched the DW Daniel boys at the SCHSL State Championships.
November 02nd, 2024
Several athletes walked away from the final stop of the 2024 World Cup with major bonuses. On the women’s side, Kate Douglass claimed the top spot overall over American teammate Regan Smith, taking home the $12,000 prize. In Singapore, Douglass also broke the World Record in the 200 breaststroke for the second time in a week, earning an additional $10,000 en route to sweeping the event across the series, claiming another $10,000 Triple Crown bonus. Besides the 200 breast, Douglass also swept the 100 IM and 50 butterfly, earning another $20,000.
With Douglass taking 2/3 stops on the series, she also claimed the $100,000 bonus for leading the overall series point rankings. Combined with her previous earnings, she’s walking away from the series with a huge $184,000 paycheck.
Smith also claimed two World Record and two Triple Crown bonuses in Singapore, winning both the 100 and 200 backstroke in record-breaking fashion. With her previous earnings and $70,000 runner-up bonus, she will walk away from the series with $152,000.
On the men’s side, Leon Marchand opened a large gap over Noe Ponti on the final stop of the series to secure the title in Singapore and the overall series points title. Like Douglass, Marchand won 2/3 of the stops on the series en route to a $100,000 series bonus. He also secured an additional $10,000 for cracking Ryan Lochte’s World Record in the 200 IM and $30,000 in Triple Crown bonuses for sweeping the 100, 200, and 400 IM across the series. Overall, Marchand will walk away from the World Cup with $174,000 in earnings in one of his first outings as a pro.
Despite breaking the 50 butterfly World Record twice, Noe Ponti fell short of winning the series title. However, with $20,000 in World Record bonuses and $20,000 in Triple Crown bonuses, plus an additional $70,000 for finishing as the runner-up, Ponti ends the series with $142,000 in earnings.
In accordance with the latest structure of the World Cup, the top 20 athletes for both genders will take home prize money from their performance in Singapore. In addition, several athletes earned additional money, known as the Triple Crown bonus, for sweeping their events across all 3 World Cup stops, including:
Each of these swimmers will take home an additional $10,000 per event that they earned a Triple Crown in.
Courtesy: Sophie Kaufman
Like previous years, points are awarded from the finish order and how fast the swim is based on the AQUA Power Points system.
Points are awarded for speed by taking the number of AQUA Power Points a swim is worth, dividing by ten, and rounding down to the nearest tenth.
Swimmers can race as many events as they want at each stop, but only their three best scores from a stop will be added together to determine their score for the stop. At each stop, there is a total of $112,000 (USD) on offer for each gender or $672,000 for the whole series. This is the same amount as was available in 2023 and 2022.
Prize money for rankings at each stop is given through the top 20 positions with men and women scored separately. If there is a tie, the swimmer with the higher AQUA Power Points in their best event during the stop wins.
Prize Money for Each Stop:
There is also prize money for the top eight swimmers per gender at the end of the entire series. The winner of the men’s and women’s standings will each earn $100,000. A total of $262,000 will be awarded across the top eight swimmers per gender at the end of the series. Again, this is the same amount of money that was on offer in 2023.
Prize Money for Overall Series Ranking:
Total Guaranteed Prize Money To Be Awarded
In addition to the guaranteed prize money from rankings at the end of each stop and the end of the series, swimmers can earn money by breaking a world record or completing a Triple Crown—winning the same event at all three stops.
Swimmers can pick up $10,000 USD for each world record and $10,000 for each Triple Crown. Last year, Kaylee McKeown broke two world records at the World Cup series, swimming 26.86 in the 50 backstroke and a 57.33 100 backstroke at the Budapest stop. There were 20 Triple Crowns won in 2023; 12 were won by women as every women’s freestyle, backstroke, and butterfly events were Triple Crowns.
Women:
Men:
McKeown and Qin Haiyang followed up their exploits at the 2023 World Championships, where they became the first swimmers to sweep 50/100/200 of a stroke at a World Championships by winning the 2023 Swimming World Cup.
McKeown claimed the women’s trophy win 177.4 points ahead of Siobhan Haughey (166.4) and Zhang Yufei (166.2). Over the three stops of the 2023 World Cup, McKeown earned three backstroke Triple Crowns, broke two world records, and lowered the backstroke World Cup records each time she swam.
Qin won the men’s table with 175.4 points, with Thomas Ceccon (167.9) and Matthew Sates (166.8) finishing second and third. Qin earned three breaststroke Triple Crowns, setting World Cup records in the 50 and 200 breast at the first stop of the series in Berlin.
While not always the case, in 2023 the World Cup overall winners also earned the most prize money throughout the series. Qin earned $166,000 while McKeown topped all swimmers with $186,000.
I still don’t know how pro swimmers survive
A lot still need plenty of support from family for sure.
And none for MA
He needs to buy snake food. Cut the bro some slack.
Kudos to KD and Regan.
3-week girls trips to Asia usually COST 10s of thousands of dollars…. and they managed to have a fun trip together and MAKE 100s of thousands of dollars!
This has to push Kate Douglas’s a bit further into the “keep swimming” territory, at least I hope so.
on one hand yes, but on the other hand with her area of expertise in data in analytics she can earn serious money if she retires
$184k in 3 weeks while having fun traveling with friends good money?
Do they have to pay income tax on this when they get home?
It’s their job. Same as any other pro athlete. So yeah – unless they’ve got a nice little tax haven set up!
Assuming some can be written off for expenses etc.
Thought so.
The top earners will lose quite a lot of that in tax then.
It’s income, yes
That’s around $1 million just in prize money. Who foots the bill for this? Does World Aquatics get all this money from dues or big sponsors? I doubt there’s a ton of ticket sales or broadcasting revenues…
It seems like the documents outlining hosting fees have disappeared from the internet, but I believe hosting fees cover the prize money.
Who pays the hosting fee and whats their incentive? I doubt there is much benefit for it
Some combination of the local federation, local governments, national governments, host facility, etc. There’s some economy stimulus, even if it’s just for the hotel rooms for athletes and officials (which are marked way up).
Some governments use events like these for political reasons, to establish their country as one that matters in the world, etc. Depending on the country, sometimes there’s money to be made. The Shanghai stop sold tickets out very quickly, and I would guess had a lot of television interest in China. On big city tourism budgets, $300k or so isn’t a ton of money.
Remember that a lot of countries use public funds to support sports ‘just because’ they believe it’s an important enough part of… Read more »
A shout out to Beata Nelson with her contributions to the medal table:
Gold – 0
Silver – 2
Bronze – 5
$184,000 in 3 weeks. WOW! 😳
I’m surprised more swimmers don’t compete at these meets every year.
Yeah… but compare that to the #10 spot for either gender (Ingrid Wilm/Casper Corbeau, both @ $14.6K). Not that it’s an insignificant amount of money, but then couple that with the facts of a) this is right after the Olympics and b) it’s three weeks of racing and traveling, and suddenly the opportunity isn’t as “free” as you’re making it out to be.
This of course changes when you’re both an Olympic-champion level talent, and particularly good at short course, and can get closer to that top-4 spot of around $50K.
So really, the question is which other swimmers are going to be able to challenge the top 4 with a good enough chance to put their training/lives on hold.
Yeah I should’ve qualified my comment further by saying “more top level swimmers…” Like I understand Kaylee McKeown was burned out or exhausted and possibly dealing with some mental health stuff but there’s nothing like easy money to perk a person up!
The money used to be even better but the series was much longer so even less top swimmers would show up.
Nicole has been with SwimSwam since April 2020, as both a reporter and social media contributor. Prior to joining the SwimSwam platform, Nicole also managed a successful Instagram platform, amassing over 20,000 followers. Currently, Nicole is pursuing her B.S. in Biomedical Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. After competing for the swim …
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