Gretchen Walsh’s Instagram Following Jumped by 68% During US Olympic Trials

Nine straight days of primetime coverage on free-to-air NBC was a huge boon for the marketability of swimming, but it was also a huge boon for swimmers’ individual brands – at least those who took advantage.

While some athletes chose to stay out of the spotlight during last week’s Olympic Trials, skipping or delaying media access, Walsh took full advantage of her World Record and was rewarded with a huge boost in social media following – which will likely turn into big financial rewards into the Paris Games and onward to the Los Angeles 2028 Games, expected to be one of the biggest financial windfalls for American Olympic athletes in history.

From June 15th, the start of the Olympic Trials, until today, Walsh’s Instagram follower count has grown from 29,487 to 49,550 – a 68% increase. She previously saw big bumps during her historic performances at the ACC Championships and NCAA Championships, gaining about 3,000 followers at each of those meets.

While other swimmers saw jumps (Carson Foster had almost 7,000 new followers, for example; the other World Record breaker Regan Smith gained almost 15,000 followers. Caeleb Dressel got around 15,000 as well), nobody’s stock grew quite as much as Walsh’s. Even Katie Ledecky, who was the clear ‘most peoples’ favorite swimmer’ of the meet, gained less than on a percentage basis than Gretchen did. Ledecky has a much bigger audience – about 631,000 followers on Instagram – and gained about 25,000 followers during the meet.

Her Virginia teammates Alex Walsh (sister) and Kate Douglass both have more Instagram followers, but being a bit older, their stars have been rising for longer. Alex Walsh gained about 7,800 followers during the course of the Olympics, while Douglass, who didn’t do any interviews aside from the brief on deck spot with NBC until after she was done racing, gained about 6,800.

Athletes in track & field, whose Olympic Trials are also being aired on NBC this month, have seen even bigger gains. Noah Lyles, for example, has gained almost 30,000 followers in the last month, while Sha’carri Richardson has gained almost 94,000 followers in the last month (she has 3.1 million total followers).

This is all interesting because Virginia head coach said at the Olympic Trials last week that he likes to check how many Instagram followers his athletes gain when they make the Olympic Team. Social media is part of the new world of college athletics, and Virginia is doing it as well as anybody in swimming. Coaches who don’t care about their athletes’ social media followings are going to get left behind in recruiting in a hurry.

It’s also a reminder that what happens in the real world still has a huge influence on what happens in the digital space. While digital content can create digital influence, performance off social media can also have a huge impact on social media following. For any athlete with a large following, their first 2,000-3,000 followers were likely people they connected with in real life, and that is an important seed to the game.