Swimming’s world championships have arrived, with a ‘race of the century’

Olympics

One year to the day after the 2024 Olympic swimming competition began in Paris, the first major international competition of the 2028 Olympic cycle is set to begin.

The swimming program at the 2025 World Aquatics Championships starts Sunday (Saturday night Eastern time) in Singapore as Katie Ledecky, Summer McIntosh, Léon Marchand and more stars from the Paris Games kick off their runs to Los Angeles.

The year after a Games is typically one of transition. Some athletes are taking time off after the Olympic grind. Some have retired. Some new faces are emerging, and some familiar ones are plowing ahead.

“It’s going to be a unique world championships, because you don’t know what you’re going to get,” longtime NBC swimming analyst Rowdy Gaines said by phone from Singapore. “You know, in two years, we will kind of know what’s gonna happen, but this is always a strange one, the one after the Games.”