For the second straight year, your favorite SwimSwam GMs are back in their drafting chairs. Last year, we brought you the 2022 World Championships Fantasy Draft and the 2022 Commonwealth Games Fantasy Draft, earlier this year, we brought you the 2023 NCAA Championships Fantasy Draft, and today, we bring you the 2023 World Championships Fantasy Draft.
In each SwimSwam fantasy draft, four or five GMs gather to draft a team of swimmers who will be competing at the meet in question. Each GM acquires a team of eight swimmers with the goal of creating a team that will score the most points according to the scoring system below. We have kept the same scoring system from last year where individual medals, individual finals, relay medals, world records, and disqualifications each correspond to a swimmer’s point tally.
Scoring System for the 2022 SwimSwam Fantasy Draft
- Individual Gold Medal: 6 points
- Individual Silver Medal: 5 points
- Individual Bronze Medal: 4 points
- Relay Gold Medal, Swam in Finals: 4 points
- Relay Silver Medal, Swam in Finals: 3 points
- Relay Bronze Medal, Swam in Finals: 2 points
- Any relay medal, Only Swam in Prelims: 1 point
- Made an Individual Final, Didn’t Medal: 1 point
- World Record Bonus: 3 points
- DQ: -2 points
The 2023 World Championships draft took place on Monday, July 17, after preliminary entries were released by World Aquatics. Each of the five GMs had to select one swimmer from North America, Asia, Europe, and Oceania, and one from either South America, Central America, or Africa. GMs also had three wild card spots, which could be filled in with swimmers from any nation. Loretta had the first pick, followed by Braden, myself (Ben), Yanyan, and then Coleman.
Check out the live draft, conducted via Zoom, here:
Teams have been finalized and you can see which eight swimmers each GM will be relying on for points during the 2023 World Championships:
| Loretta | Braden | Ben | Yanyan | Coleman | |
| North America | Summer McIntosh | Regan Smith | Torri Huske | Kate Douglass | Katie Ledecky |
| South America/Central America/Africa | Dylan Carter | Gui Caribe | Lara Van Niekerk | Guilherme Costa | Tatjana Schoenmaker |
| Europe | Thomas Ceccon | Ruta Meilutyte | David Popovici | Nicolo Martinenghi | Leon Marchand |
| Asia | Zhang Yufei | Yang Junxuan | Li Bingjie | Qin Haiyang | Siobhan Haughey |
| Oceania | Sam Short | Emma McKeon | Mollie O’Callaghan | Kaylee McKeown | Kyle Chalmers |
| Wild Card | Hwang Sunwoo | Madi Wilson | Nic Fink | Ariarne Titmus | Carson Foster |
| Wild Card | Tom Dean | Lilly King | Kylie Masse | Hunter Armstrong | Alessandro Miressi |
| Wild Card | Tomoru Honda | Ryan Murphy | Shayna Jack | Sarah Sjostrom | Gretchen Walsh |
Let us know in the comments who you think has the best team, who made a questionable pick, and how you expect the competition to shake out. Additionally, check back in during the swimming portion of the 2023 World Championships to keep track of the fantasy draft scores as well as all of SwimSwam’s coverage of the biggest meet of the year.
Ok here’s my “undrafted” draft picks. I’ve mostly just gone with relay potential.
Pan Zhanle (multiple individual chance and China relays look solid)
Xu Jiayu (as above)
Ryan Held (1 individual chance and likely on a few relays finals)
Weitzeil (as above)
Duncan Scott (1 individual chance but a few very strong relays)
Cam McEvoy (I have faith he’ll perform well and apparently Kyle has convinced him to swim the 100 free relay?)
Lani Pallister (2x individual medal chances, 400 free final, 1 x relay gold/WR chance)
Meg Harris (no individuals BUT likely to win 1 relay gold and swim 5 relay heats so she could rack up more points than an individual event winner just from that)
Harris likely won’t get all those heat swims with Jack and Wilson available as well and I don’t think Harris was fast enough to earn a 4×2 heat swim.
Fingers crossed Cam McEvoy is selected to swim heats of 4x100m free relay. It’ll be great to see what form he is in in the 100m.
You did not choose any swimmer from South America/Central America/Africa…
I was going unrestricted because it was the leftovers
Wonder what the ‘best of the rest” is going to look like this year
North America Ryan Held
South America/Central America/Africa Ahmed Hafnaoui
Europe Ben Proud
Asia Hwang Sunwoo
Oceania Zac S-C
WC (3) Alessandro Miressi, Lydia Jacoby, Abby Weitzel
(I’ll be honest, I struggled with Asia and South/Central America/Africa)
Hwang was drafted by Retta
Dangit, I missed him in the wild cards
Asia is easily Pan Zhanle the one to choose
Surprised no one chose. Held as a wild card.
Had a bad 100 free finals, but he is prob going to be the one on all the sprint free positions and has a shot at a top 3 in the 50 free
Oooh this is going to be interesting!
RETTA
McIntosh – obviously super strong pick, possibly MVP but Canada’s relay issues work against her.
Carter – love Dylan! Contender for a couple of individual medals but no guarantees and could end up with only a couple of points.
Ceccon- very strong pick. Multiple individual gokd potential and strong relay potential.
Zhang Yufei – I think she’s being undervalued by many. I see her with 6 medals: 3 individual and 3 relay.
Short – An interesting one. Multiple medal potential but likely no relays. Could be good but also could not get many points at all with his super competitive events.
Hwang Sunwoo – strong medal potential… Read more »
Fair assessment. I think the biggest disagreement I have is whether or not Costa will score points – he had a medal among three finals last year, and that was with the specter of an open water relay looming. I think he’ll for sure final in the 400 with a medal chance, and I’d bet on him getting at least a final in the 800.
Fair call. His best rank so far this year is 25th in the 400 which, looking at the numbers, makes him by far the weakest pick on paper. I can see him making the final and getting one point but there are 5 contenders with stronger lifetime bests and 3 of those have faster current season times than his PB.
Sub13, at 2022 before Worlds his season beast was 3:47 mid.. and it is not like he needed to taper as he has no competition and he already had all A Cut because of 2022 worlds
Coleman for the win!
SwimSwam’s draft is set,
Champions picked, hopes are high,
Fantasy takes flight.
Here are the point projections based on the psych sheet! For relays I used the psych sheet combined with 2023 rankings to project who would be on each relay. I also didn’t include prelim relays projections and I assumed M-M-F-F for mixed medley relays. And I also didn’t include Marchand’s psych sheet points in 200 Br since he said he wouldn’t swim it.
LORETTA — 84
Summer: 22 + 10
Dylan Carter: 4 + 0
Thomas Ceccon: 12 + 7
Yufei Zhang: 4 + 0
Samuel Short: 6 + 3
Hwang Sunwoo: 5 + 0
Tom Dean: 2 + 2
Tomoru Honda: 7 + 0
BRADEN — 88
Regan Smith: 19… Read more »
I assume left is individual points and right is relay? Where is Summer getting 10 relay points from? I don’t think Canada’s add ups get them in the top 3 for any relay but you have her getting 3+ medals?
Are you using this year’s rankings or their entry times? Because those will result in wildly different outcomes but you say you’re using both?
But some of these must be wrong. Eg if you’re using last year’s entry times then Kyle should have 4+3 just for the MxFR world record last year. But you have him with 6 points.
So I used only the psych sheet for individual times and for scoring relays, but I used this years rankings to project who would be on the relays. So Summer’s relay points is because I projected her to be on all the relays since she’s Canada’s fastest 100 freestyler this year (and faster than their individual entries). Projecting relays for something like this is hard to do objectively. 🤷🏽♂️
Ok so you projected Summer to swim all the Canadian relays based on her 2023 rank, but what did you use to actually predict the relay outcomes? I still don’t see how you have Canada winning 4 relay medals based on their 2023 times or their entry times.
They are seeded on the psych sheet to medal in all 3 women’s relays plus the mixed free relay. Will they? Almost assuredly not, but I just went off the psych sheet.
Right. Ok obviously this was just meant to be a quick thing but you’ve basically picked the worst possible combo of data.
You’ve allocated points based on current rankings and who you think will swim, but allocated medals based on last year’s times that used a different set of swimmers.
I think you’d be much more accurate to just leave the relay points off altogether. You’re basically allocating points that you know beyond a shadow of a doubt aren’t going to happen. Just use swimswam’s predictions if you want a more accurate picture.
I think it was a big miss not drafting Pan Zhanle. He’s ranked number 1 in the world in both the 100 and 200 freestyles. And China is gonna be good on the relays.
Agreed, huge miss (i also missed it), i don’t think that Hwang, Miressi or Honda should have been picked ahead of him.
Pan: Could medal in up to 6 events (100/200 free, medley relay, mixed medley relay, 4 x 100 free relay, mixed 4 x 100 free relay) + final in the 4 x 200 free relay
Hwang: Probably is at best on par with Pan in the 100/200/4 x 200 free and probably won’t make any other final. Honda: Probably will only make 1 final (and win a medal)
Miressi: Will at best win 3 medals (100 free, 4 x 100 free, medley relay) and could at best make 3 more finals (50 free, mixed 4… Read more »
Miressi isn’t entered in the 50.
I’m higher on China and lower on Italy than most of the SwimSwam writers.
I think Yanyan casually said on the draft that Italy is the favorite in the men’s medley relay. Meanwhile China has the number 1 ranked swimmer in backstroke, breaststroke, and freestyle this year, and I barely hear them mentioned.
Yeah 😬😬 we filmed that before I did the men’s preview podcast, where I looked at each country’s best options and revised my picks (though Coleman called me out for it). I now think USA and China are both favored over Italy.