World Aquatics Championships 2024: U.S. swimmers 'excited' to race despite big-name absences
Kate Douglass and Hunter Armstrong played down the effect of a World Championships in an Olympic year, which has caused a number of bigger names to stay away.
Swimming
Doha 2024 is a rare World Aquatics Championships in an Olympic year.
As a result, many of swimming's big names have opted against travelling to the Qatari capital, preferring to ramp up their progress towards this summer's Paris 2024 Games instead of peaking twice in a season.
But Kate Douglass, the defending women's 200m individual medley world champion, is not one of them. She is in Doha, and on Friday (9 February) expressed their eagerness to race.
The 22-year-old said the opportunity to defend her title fired her up. "It definitely gives me a lot of confidence going into that race," she told reporters during a pre-event media huddle.
"Obviously the field isn't as competitive as it was last summer, but I think it'll still be a great race, and I'm just excited to see where I'm at with that race right now this season. It's still going to be a great competition."
Did she have doubts about attending? "I knew I wanted to come but I knew it was going to be a small team," she said. "So I was a little hesitant, but I talked to my coaches and they felt it was a good decision for me to come and that it wasn't going to be detrimental to my season at all.
"I wanted to come practise racing a bit and maybe get on the podium a few times."
Douglass originally planned to enter six events in preparation for a multi-event tilt in Paris. However, she revealed to reporters that she would cut the 100m breaststroke and 50m butterfly, with the 200m individual medley final coming on the same day as the 100m breaststroke semis.
"I'm going to scratch two of them. I was looking at the lineup and it just doesn't seem feasible, if I want to focus on certain events, to add others to my schedule.
"I wanted to kind of put my focus on swimming a good 200 IM, that's kind of the reason for that.
"For me, the more that I race and the more I do all these doubles, it just kind of takes the nerves away and gets me prepared. Hopefully [this] summer I'll be more relaxed if I have to do a lineup like this. I think now is to practise doing all these events and doubles to get me ready for trials and then hopefully Paris."
Another American defending world champion, Hunter Armstrong (men's 50m backstroke), agreed with Douglass.
In his own words, Armstrong is "fairly new to the swimming scene" – this is just his fourth year competing internationally, having made his global debut in 2021 at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020.
"Any opportunity that I can get to get some racing with high-level competition, I'll take," he told reporters. "(Defending his title) is another reason to come but I'm doing a lot more events than I'm used to at this meet. So I'm really just here to have fun… and get some good racing experience, maybe some confidence, for Paris."
If Armstrong was concerned about not facing the best-of-the-best in Doha, he did not let it show.
"I don't know about the field being weaker. I think this meet, we're going to see a lot of really strong swimmers come out of this meet; people that are about to sort of burst onto the scene. Not sure who those people are but I'm excited to see."
Nor was he concerned about having to peak twice this season, for Worlds then for the U.S. trials and Olympic Games.
"I'm going to take my performance from here and I think we have four or five months before our trials," he explained. "So if I do really good here, then I get to maintain my training. If I don't meet my goals or where I think I should be, then I sit down with my coach and I discuss what changes need to be made."