The United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) has recently selected a delegation to represent their country at the Youth Olympic Games in Senegal this October, and no swimmers have been chosen for the trip.

This announcement is coming off of USA Swimming's decision to not send a delegation to the event because it interfered with their Junior National Team resources. This does not necessarily mean that swimmers from the USOPC were prevented from going to the event though; two years ago, both the USA Swimming and the US-IUSF made separate delegations to the World University Games because USA Swimming felt the effort was not worth it.

However, that was not the case this time, and swimming will not be one of the 12 represented sports from the US on this trip. The delegation will consist of 29 athletes in total and those 29 will represent twelve sports: archery, badminton, breaking, equestrian, rugby sevens, rowing, taekwondo, triathlon, skateboarding, volleyball, beach wrestling, and wushu (martial arts).

The competition swimming events are set for between November 1-6 at the Egg Tower Complex in Dakar, Senegal. Unfortunately this puts this close in date to the USA Swimming Short Course World Trials that are scheduled for between October 28-31 in Illinois; therefore, swimmers competing in Short Course Trials cannot and will not be able to attend the Youth Olympic Games in Senegal.

The last edition of the Youth Olympic Games took place in 2018 and the US had a much smaller 8-person delegation which included Kate Douglass. At the time, Douglass had just missed qualifying for the junior Pan Pacifics, and therefore was placed on the 'next tier' and represented the US in the meet, finishing 6 th in the 50 free in 25.83.

Although the United States did not send a large delegation, a few swimmers on a smaller 2018 roster have gone on to be some of the largest names in swimming.

Australian Kaylee McKeown went home with golds, silvers, and bronzes from the 50, 100, and 200 backstroke, as well as a world record in each. Thomas Ceccon from Italy won the 50 freestyle and Kristof Milak from Hungary took the golds in the 200 and 400 freestyle and the 200 butterfly.

Changes for 2026

Swimming Australia also decided not to bring a delegation to the Games.

The IOC under president Kirsty Coventry decided to use this hiatus as time to redefine the scope of the games. "This sport-by-sport approach, with sport tailored to the Youth Olympic Games programme, will help make every edition clearly connected to the host region and relevant to their specific challenges and needs," Coventry said in a release earlier this year. This flexibility ensures that the YOG are always more attractive to watch, remain pertinent and will also promote new ideas.

This "tailored approach" has resulted in no event exceeding a certain sport, so an event has been categorized as swimming which is in the aquatics sport. It is predicted that this decision combined with the reduced number of athletes for each event would put a halt on roughly 4,000 athletes, down to an average of 2,700, with equal numbers of boys and girls. With less athletes allowed there are also not as many available events: instead of 32 sports being presented, there will now only be 25 and a reduction in events from 239 to 153. 

Exact plans for swimming were not available at the time, however it is not expected to carry the number of events it usually does. 

The plan, which has been made known, calls for 73 events for both boys and girls, as well as 7 combined events.

The competition is open to individuals aged between 14-17 in 2026 instead of 15-18. The 25 exhibition sports are athletics (track and field), aquatics (swimming), archery, badminton, baseball (5), basketball (33), boxing, breaking, cycling (road cycling), equestrian (jumping), fencing, football (futsal), gymnastics (artistic gymnastics), handball (beach handball), judo, rowing (coastal rowing), rugby (rugby sevens), sailing, skateboarding (street), table tennis, taekwondo, triathlon, volleyball (beach volleyball), wrestling (beach wrestling) and wushu.

The 10 engagement sports for the games, or activities that allow both participants to present digitally or through ground participation were as follows: canoe-kayak, golf, hockey, karate, modern pentathlon, shooting, sport climbing, surfing, tennis and weightlifting. All road and beach sports have been dropped in order to better preserve the cities by preventing excessive shutdown of the public.

Written by

Lakshya