The 20th World Aquatics Championships will be held from July 14-30 in Fukuoka, Japan. Aside from the Summer Olympics, the Aquatics Championships are the biggest showcase of aquatic sports in the world.
Held every second year, the competition features all six of the major aquatic categories — swimming, diving, high diving, artistic swimming, water polo and open water swimming.
The United States has dominated the Aquatics Championships since they were first hosted by Yugoslavia in 1973 — securing the most medals in 15 of 19 events. But here at EmpireStakes.com – your source for NY sports betting promos - we’re wondering which U.S. state boasts the most successful American swimmers.
To find out, we used Wikipedia.com’s results of both men’s and women’s events for all 19 previous times the World Championships were held since 1973 (they are not held annually). We found the 181 unique U.S.-born swimmers who have won gold, silver or bronze medals at the event. We then used their biographies to find the states that have produced the best swimmers from the United States.
States With Most WAC Swimming Medalists
Here are results you won’t find among the myriad of information on legal NY betting apps.
New York’s Best: Ryan Lochte
According to our research, California has America’s best swimmers. By our numbers, one quarter of the men and women who’ve won a medal at the World Aquatics Championship in the past 20 years were born in the Golden State.
New York rates out in a respectable second place as the birthplace of 15 World Aquatics medalists. Among those, Rochester’s Ryan Lochte is by far the most successful. Lochte has won 27 medals at the World Aquatics Championships since his first appearance in 2005, including 18 golds. He’s also a 12-time Olympic medalist.
His exploits, of course, came far before mobile New York sports betting came into play a year ago.
While Ryan Lochte enjoyed a storied career inside the pool, he’s also generated a fair share of controversy outside of it. At the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro, Lochte was caught urinating outside a local gas station alongside three other members of the U.S, swim team. He was suspended for 10 months after he lied about the details surrounding the incident, claiming to have been robbed at gun point, when actually he had tried to pay off the security guards who had caught him in the act.
Then in 2018, in a separate incident, Lochte received a 14-month ban from the U.S. Anti-Doping agency for using a “prohibited intravenous infusion.”
Still, Lochte’s achievements at the World Aquatic Championship cannot be denied. In the history of men’s performance at the event, Lochte rates out behind only one man, Michael Phelps.
With a total of 33 medals — 26 of which would be classified “AU” on the periodic table of elements — Phelps is the most decorated swimmer in competition history. He is also the winningest Olympian of all time.
Katie Ledecky has won the most medals for women for Team USA at the World Aquatics Championship. With 19 gold medals to her name, Ledecky is tied with Russian Artistic Swimmer Svetlana Romashina for the most podium-topping performances at the World Aquatics. But Katie Ledecky has far fewer appearances at the competition.
