Earlier this week, we tallied up the most-commented SwimSwam stories of the year 2016. That list is typically very heavy on live meet recaps, which function as much as a live chatroom as they do a comment section. So to filter out that effect, we’ve also compiled a list of the top non-recap stories to amass the most comments in the year 2016.
Our top 22 most-commented stories were all meet recaps, spread between the Rio Olympics, U.S. Olympic Trials and the men’s NCAA Championships. But below is our list of non-recap stories, each of which inspired hundreds of reader comments.
It’s no surprise that two of the most contentious and controversial stories of 2016 garnered the most comments. The Brock Turner sexual assault trial and resulting conviction and sentence became widely-discussed even outside of swimming and brought a huge wave of new commenters to SwimSwam, as well as stirring discussion among those who regularly follow swimming. Our story on the victim statement read at the trial, combined with a leaked court statement from Turner’s father, was our most-commented story on the list, with 362 comments.
The other story to inspire massive discussion was the Ryan Lochte saga involving an alleged armed robbery, then alleged vandalism at a gas station bathroom in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil after the swimming portion of the Olympics had wrapped. Varying pieces of that story take up 9 of our top 20 spots on the list, with a total of 1,937 comments.
Here’s the full listing below. We’ve included 21 stories, as we had a tie for the 20th spot at 176 comments apiece.
The “overall rank” column shows where that story ranks in our overall list of comments, including meet recaps and non-news pieces. All comment numbers are as of publication (on January 3, 2017).
Top 20 Most-Commented Stories on SwimSwam.com For 2016 (Excluding Recaps)
Also, check out our other countdowns of 2016’s top stories:
A number of the top stories involved MISBEHAVIOR of some kind.
The silver lining is that Swimmers and Coaches will try to stay out of trouble. Not worth the scandal and legal consequences.
No more vulgar e-mails, drunken international incidents, etc.
Sad to see so many controversies and scandals in that list. It really shows something about the current society.
It really does LOL
There is nothing wrong with the society. It is hard to evaluate what this list reflects. It is either “yellow press” taste of the readers of this site or it is a real concern about problems in the swimming society that doesn’t allow people to stay silent. With your frequent discussion of American political issues on the swimming news site you should understand what I mean.
I’m of two minds on that. On the one hand, I think it’s a good thing that many of these stories incited as much discussion as they did. The only way society as a whole can make progress on difficult issues like sexual assault, doping or sexual abuse is to have open conversation about them. In that regard, I think the most important journalistic impact we at SwimSwam can have is giving our readers as much information as possible and letting readers discuss and draw their own conclusions. To me, that has a bigger impact on the world than stories about someone swimming fast (though the swim nerd in me loves those stories as well!).
On the other hand, having… Read more »
Well, of course they are. Being highly public and commented on is a prerequisite to being labelled a controversy. Same with scandals. It’s not like the Rio 2016 prediction of Ledecky winning the 800 was going to generate vast, heated disagreement.
It looks like scandals were the most popular topics.
Is it too late to make 7 quick comments about Phelps’ under armor ad so he overtakes Brock Turner?
I love reading the Rio 4×100 free relay preview comments. Australia is definitely going to win.
Just remember you are only as good as your last race.