PHELPS & Rowdy VS USA Swimming

Are Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte right to criticize USA Swimming? Team USA won the most gold medals and overall medals at the World Championships, but is it enough? Why is Team USA trending in the wrong direction? What do I think? Rowdy Gaines, the voice of swimming, openly criticized the board of USA Swimming. What do I think? Am I and should we be satisfied with the current results and direction of USA Swimming? All of that and more in today's video. Also, the remainder of the race recap videos, my World Championship highlights from all the events that I didn't get to. I'm going to get to those. I will post those for all of you that have been asking about it, but I wanted to prioritize this because so many people have asked me about it, so we're going to talk about it. During the World Championships on the North American broadcast, Rowdy Gaines was very open about how he was not satisfied with the current state of USA Swimming. I think he took a little bit of heat from people in the public, from the viewers, and people that he knows about maybe not being as positive and jolly as he normally is. That's understandable given the fact that we just overall as a country underperformed. We're going to talk about that in a minute, but for now, let's just briefly touch on the Rowdy Phelps saga and all that kind of stuff. If you didn't read Rowdy's statement that he put out after the World Championships, it was very long, but there were basically three points. Point number one, USA Swimming is not headed in the right direction currently. Point number two, we do not have a CEO, and USA Swimming needs a CEO. Point number three, and this is what he spent the most time talking about, it's not the athlete's fault, and there are a lot of great people at USA Swimming and within the whole umbrella of USA Swimming that are doing a whole lot of things. I was actually talking to Rowdy about this a little bit. He asked me what I thought about his statement, and I said, look, most of the statement is praising a whole lot of people that we already know are great, but there are no actionable steps that are laid out that need to be taken in order to get us on track. You see, what you need to understand is basically from 2017 until now, all of the metrics that you would gauge an organization by in terms of success has been trending in the wrong direction. The overall membership numbers within USA Swimming has been going down each year. The number of sponsorships and partnerships has gone down. The success of the U.S. national team on the international stage has not been the best. Again, we're going to talk about that. The perception of that is it has gone down, and we've now gone a year without a CEO. If you ask me, Cody, how do you feel about Rowdy's statement, I mean, I agree with everything he said. If you ask me, Cody, how do you feel about Ryan Lochte and Michael Phelps's response to what went down? If you didn't know, they posted a meme that I thought was kind of funny. I'll put it up there, basically insinuating that Team USA is just not on the right track. We're just not doing good enough. Rowdy said in his statement, look, they're saying this because they care, which is true. We as fans of USA Swimming, if Team USA is the team that you're rooting for, like I am, you have to have an honest look in the mirror and say, hey, are we where we need to be leading into a home Olympics? These are the results of the most recent world championships. Are we okay with only beating the country of Australia by one gold medal? Yes, we won the overall medal count, that's good, but are we okay with these results? I personally am not. I have a higher expectation. I have an expectation that we win at least one Relay gold medal on the men's side. The only gold medal that the men won in a Relay was the 4x100 Freestyle Mixed Relay, the men and the women, so that goes into the collective team bucket, so that doesn't count. We didn't even medal in the 4x200 Freestyle Relay. That's just not good enough. You know, a bronze medal in the 4x100 Medley Relay is just not good enough. The Relays are your show of overall strength and force as a team, as a country. The 4x100 Freestyle Relay is a show of overall speed. Who has the four fastest swimmers? The Freestyle is the fastest stroke. Who puts together the four fastest 100s? There's pride in speed. The 4x200 Freestyle Relay is a show of endurance. Training for the 200 Freestyle is grueling. It's one of the hardest events to be really, really good at because it takes speed and endurance. Who puts together the four best 200 Freestylers in the world? There's a sense of pride in that. Great Britain is dominating on the men's side. The most important Relay, in my opinion, the crown jewel of swimming and of Team USA's history is the 4x100 Medley Relay because it is a show of speed and strength across all four strokes. Who has the best combination of all four swimmers in a 100 meter distance? And up until recently, the United States had only ever won the gold medal. That is the most important Relay to us. And I know what some of you might be thinking, Cody, you're just saying that because you won a gold medal on that Relay, because I'm a part of that history. That's not true. I'm saying that as someone who, even if I never went to the Olympics, even if I never represented Team USA, as a fan of a team, we are the deepest, most successful country in history in this sport. And as a fan of that, the 4x100 Medley Relay is the pinnacle. It is the greatest show of strength and versatility across your swim team. And we should just never lose that race. That is just my opinion. Maybe you disagree with that. That is okay. But at the very least, it should be close. At the very least, Team USA should be right there vying for a medal. And we barely scraped on to the podium with a bronze medal finish. And this is not a knock on the men that were on that Relay this summer or last summer. I know those guys. I love those guys. I respect those guys. But everyone within USA Swimming understands that we're vying for the gold medal. And missing the podium in Relays is not good enough. And especially in the 4x100 Medley. Again, as just a fan of this team, that's the expectation. Now let's circle back to the medal count real quick. The women's side of Team USA did pretty good overall. They're in a pretty decent position. But the men's team, they only won one individual gold medal. Luca's 200 fly was amazing. It was a killer race. I love that. Go watch my recap video on that. It was great. But only one individual gold is just not good enough. And you know, there's this sense of, well, Team USA got sick. There was this bug that was going around. A lot of people pulled out. So there will always be an asterisk when we look back at this competition. In terms of the quad as we lead into the next Olympics. There will always be this big, you know, let's just call it what it is. It's an excuse. In some cases, it's a valid excuse. In some cases, it's not. But I'll tell you what, just plain and simple. On my spreadsheet, leading into Worlds, coming out of US Nationals, the men's team looked weaker than they had ever looked before. So even with the handful of scratches, I don't think that, you know, even without that sickness, we would have done all that much better. Sure, Bobby Fink would have been in there vying for medals. Carson Foster probably would have been in there vying for medals. But who else? Like there are too many events where we did not have an American in the final, where we had people missing semifinals. That's just, again, coming from a place of love. My expectation is that if you're on Team USA, you're at minimum in the final and you should be fighting for a medal. And it just hasn't been good enough. We got lucky last summer that Bobby Fink won the mile on the last day of the Olympics, saving Team USA's men's team from going an entire Olympic cycle without any individual gold medals. Again, that would have been pretty catastrophic. We all agree on that. That would have looked very bad. And here we are again this summer where we only had one and no relay golds on the men's side. Again, the mixed 4x100 freestyle, that goes in the team bucket. But we just should be better. You know, like I love Australia. I love how fast they're swimming. They're doing great. They're a country of 30 million people. That's one state. We have 300 million more people in this country. I can't remember which Australian Olympian, there was a female Olympic swimmer that said it's really kind of a David versus Goliath kind of thing. And it's kind of true. Like, we really are the Goliath. We really are. We really are this juggernaut. And because of that, we have these high expectations. But again, you know, in Rowdy's case, it's coming from a place of love. The next three years leading into the LA Olympics is probably the most important time in USA Swimming's history. We have to perform well on home soil for the overall health and growth and longevity of our sport, of USA Swimming. It is critical that we do well there because it starts from the top and it trickles down. It's a no-brainer that USA Swimming had this influx of sponsors, this influx of membership numbers, this influx of everything when we were at the height of the Phelps era, when we had some of the greatest American swimmers ever winning all these gold medals at the Olympics every four years. We just have to do good. Now the question is, can USA Swimming turn this ship around? Can we make improvements? Can we put ourselves in a position to have the meat that we need, that we want here on home soil at the LA Olympics in 2028? The answer is yes. But as Rowdy said, we've got to hire a CEO. You can't run an organization without a head coach, without a CEO. That's pretty crazy that we're going on basically a year with that. The national team department is getting structured. There are a lot of things, and maybe I'll do a whole video on this, there are a number of things that USA Swimming could do and could implement to help the growth and to help the performance of the national team athletes. You know, one of my biggest complaints is it's harder to make a living now as a professional swimmer just as a base level US national team member, not an Olympic medalist, not an Olympian, but just a national teamer trying to make an Olympic team. It's harder now than it ever has been before. It's more expensive to live now, everything costs more, and you are paid less money now from the funding that you get from the International Olympic Committee. Yeah, maybe I'll do a whole video on that. It's just like, I look at myself right out of college deciding whether or not I was going to keep training with the hopes of making an Olympic team or joining the workforce and actually making money. It's harder to do that now. And not everyone should have to be me to provide for themselves. You shouldn't have to create a media empire and create a podcast and run a YouTube show to make enough money to have a sustainable living. You know, I was actually talking to Mel Stewart about this on the Swim Swim Live show during the World Championships. It's like, I've created this little tiny media ecosystem in our little swim bubble here on the internet. I've got a number of sponsors. I make ad revenue. I was able to swim for over 10 years on the U.S. national team, not because I needed the money that I would earn if I swam well, and if I made athlete partnership agreement and I basically got a salary from the IOC, I didn't rely on those things because I had this, because I had a lot of you viewers watching my YouTube channel. And that was great. I got really lucky that that all worked out, but you shouldn't have to do that. And there are ways for these athletes to make a living that would benefit them that USA Swimming should do. And this is something that I will absolutely have conversations with those people about. Again, I could make a whole video on that, but there's a number of those, a number of those things. Again, these are things that Mel and I did talk about publicly on their show. Now, do I think we can do it? Will we do it? Honestly, I'm an optimist and I'm not just saying this because I want to be an optimist. I absolutely think that we can and we will. There are beacons of light and beacons of hope, like the Jack Alexies of the world, like the Campbell McKeons of the world, even some athletes that maybe you're watching this video that haven't broken out and made the national team yet. There will be names and stars that are born at the trials before the LA Olympics in 2028. People that we haven't even heard of. I have faith in that. Absolutely. I do have faith in USA Swimming. I do think that the ship will be turned around and that we will be looked at as the powerhouse that we have been in the past. And you say, Cody, why? Why do you feel that way? What would make you say that other than just being an optimist? Because there are too many people out there, too many athletes that are hungry, that are willing to do the work that will put them in positions to achieve lifelong dreams. And on top of that, and equally important as that, is there are a lot of people that want to work hard to help those athletes. There are a lot of people that want to make the organization that is USA Swimming better, that want to benefit those people, provide opportunities for those people, and make the whole ecosystem work better. And I know a lot of those people. So I absolutely have faith in that. Yes, I do. But again, my one critique, and I told this to Rowdy, is that there's no actionable steps that need to be taken to push us in the right direction. Here's a genuine question for all of you. How do you feel about the results of Team USA this past summer and at the last Olympics? Are we where we need to be as a country? Are you satisfied with it? Do you agree with me? Are you not satisfied? Do you think, ah, this is just the way the world is now? If you don't feel like we are where we should be, what actionable steps should be taken to point us in that direction? Let me know down there below. Maybe I'll make a whole video about that. Again, I have a long list of things racked up in my brain over years of being a part of Team USA that I think would greatly benefit Team USA athletes or just base-level national team athletes. Let me know down there below. I am still on Operation 50 Miles in 50 States. I'm scheduling events for the remainder of this year and 2026. If you'd like to bring me out for a speaking event, a swim clinic, a competition, something, send me an email to CodyMillerShow at gmail.com and maybe I'll be racing you at your home pool sometime this or next year. We've got merch at CodyMillerSwim.com. I am available on Cameo if you'd like a personalized video from me to you or someone you know for whatever reason. New videos every single week and until the next one, I will see you all later.