SwimSwam's Top 100 For 2025: Men's #100-91

Yesterday at 04:32 PM

By Sophie Kaufman on SwimSwam

After an unprecedented year of racing that included the Olympics sandwiched between the Long Course and Short Course World Championships, it’s time to start releasing our fifth annual Top 100 list—check out last year’s rankings here.

As in previous years, we've taken a statistically driven approach reliant primarily upon world rankings and medals won at the Olympics, and to a lesser extent, Short Course Worlds and the 2024 Worlds in Doha. We've also taken into account things such as potential, future medal opportunities, injuries, and versatility. Long course is weighted more than short course, though performance potential in both formats is factored in.

After a large contingent of Russian and Belarusian swimmers raced at the Short Course Worlds in December, those swimmers have started to move back up the rankings. They were low on the lists last year due to a lack of competition.

We'll be breaking down the top 100 into multiple installments, so keep an eye out as they're released.

These lists are, by nature, subjective. If you disagree, leave your thoughts/ranks in the comments.

Thank you to Daniel Takata for his help with the data and compiling the rankings. 

Men's Rankings:

• #100 – #91
• #90 – #81
• #80 – #71
• #70 – #61
• #60 – #51
• #50 – #41
• #40 – #31
• #30 – #21
• #20 – #11
• #10 – #1

#100: James Guy, Great Britain (2024 Rank: NR) — At 29 years old, James Guy is having a bit of a late-career surge. Last year, he swam best times in the 100 free (48.68) and 200 free (1:45.04) in long course, and continued to be a crucial relay contributor for Great Britain – which has always been his specialty. In other races he wasn’t as good – in the 100 fly at the Olympics, for example, he was a second-and-a-half off his best time. That 200 time, though, if done at the right meet, would have earned him 5th – though it’s going to continue to be difficult for him to crack Great Britain’s lineup in an individual freestyle event. But nine years without a best time in the 200 free and finally getting back there shows that it’s not time to sunset his career yet.

#99: Ippei Watanabe, Japan (2024 Rank: 54) — Ippei Watanabe broke the World Record in the 200 breaststroke in 2017 when he was only 20 years old, but then went cold, unable to get back to his best time. 2024 was his best season in a while, swimming matching 2:07.62s at the Australian Open Championships in April and the Mare Nostrum in May. He ran out of steam at the Olympics, though, finishing 6th in 2:08.83. His season-best would have won silver, though.

#98: Mykhailo Romanchuk, Ukraine (2024 Rank: 57) — Mykhailo Romanchuk finished 17th at the Paris Olympics in the 800 free and scratched the 1500. A Ukrainian, Romanchuk has been pushed out of his home country due to the Russian invasion and hasn’t been a best time in a primary event since 2022. While many like to pretend that politics don’t impact sports or vice-versa, the fate of that war could determine the fate of his future in swimming. He’s still not that far removed from being one of the best distance swimmers in the world, and distance guys have recently performed well into their late 20s.

#97: Chase Kalisz, USA (2024 Rank: 51) — Chase Kalisz, now 30, is on the tail end of his career, though he still had enough to make the U.S. Olympic Team. Wouldn’t be surprised to see him retire after this season, but also wouldn’t be surprised to see him pop a 4:08 400 IM and land on a podium at the World Championships.

#96: Arno Kamminga, Netherlands (2024 Rank: 40) — Arno Kamminga was a runaway train in 2021, and looked like the guy who could challenge Peaty’s legacy – with a wicked 200 to boot. He caught a bad case of COVID-19 in 2022, though, and hasn’t really been able to recapture that momentum. He finished 4th in last year’s World Rankings in the 100 breaststroke but is now 29 and will have to find a new coach for 2025. This is a retirement that I would not be surprised to see in 2025.

#95: Guilherme Costa, Brazil (2024 Rank: 58) — Guilherme Costa brought down his historic focus on the 800 and 1500 into the 400 free in 2024, and was rewarded with a 5th place finish at the Olympics and a new Americas Record. He joined Cesar Cielo and Felipe Lima as the only Brazilians to hold such a mark in swimming. The 400 free, though, has become a suddenly-deep event, and Costa had to basically mortgage his 800 (20th at the Olympics) and 1500 to get there. Barring another pivot back to distance, it seems like he’s all-in on this 400 free going forward – but the guys ahead of him at the Olympics all have the benefit of youth over the 26-year-old Brazilian.

#94: Danas Rapsys, Lithuania (2024 Rank: NR) — The 29-year-old Danas Rapsys went for a ride in 2024. Shifting focus downward from the 400 free (though he still swam that race at the Olympics), the Lithuanian swam a best time of 48.04 in the 100 free to finish 4th at the European Championships and won silver at Worlds in the 200 free after a prelims 1:44.96 – his first taste of 1:44 since 2019. He missed peaking at the Olympics, though was still able to tie for fifth in the 200-meter final. Rapsys seems to be settling into training as an older swimmer, where sometimes less is more after a disappointing Short Course Worlds result, so hopefully that carries him forward into his 30s.

#93: Max Litchfield, Great Britain (2024 Rank: NR) — After a couple of rocky years for ‘personal reasons,’ Max Litchfield returned to full speed in 2024, placing 4th in the 400 IM at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Another 29-year-old in this grouping, he knocked almost a second off the best time that he hadn’t cleared since 2017. This is the only event where he’s seriously challenging on the international stage at this point, and while he’s never going to get down to the 4:02s where Leon Marchand is, 4:08s win a lot of big international medals.

#92: Jack Aikins, USA (2024 Rank: NR) — After a redshirt season last year that led to 3rd place finishes in both the 100 back and 200 back at the U.S. Olympic Trials, Jack Aikins is back competing for the varsity squad at Virginia this fall. The backstroke races are in a down-cycle internationally, and without full certainty of how much vigor Ryan Murphy or Hunter Armstrong will put into the 2024-2025 season, Aikins has a chance at finding himself on a podium next summer in Singapore. While the Virginia women have been killing it, the men’s squad has dealt with losing a lot of their big names in the last three years. One of the top recruiting classes we’ve ever seen will arrive in the fall, though, if not sooner, and how well Aikins adapts to that energy, momentum, and a much bigger pond on the men’s side could determine his future in the sport.

#91: Max Giuliani, Australia (2024 Rank: 66) — Entering the prime quad of his career, the 21-year-old Giuliani won the Australian Olympic Trials race in the 200 free and then lurched forward, dropping half a second at the Olympics to finish 7th. He also picked up a relay bronze medal, leading off Australia’s 800 free quartet in finals. Giuliani has one of those upward trajectories right now where it seems like he hits best times at almost every big meet – including Short Course Worlds, where he won silver in the 200 free. 2025 will be the chance to cement him as one of the best swimmers in the world – and perhaps time for him to figure out how to balance the 200 free and the 100 free. His best 100 time, 48.21, came in 2023 at the U.S. Pro Championships; despite his 200 free improvements in 2024, he was unable to better that time, going just 48.90 at Trials. A second event would vault him up these rankings.

Read the full story on SwimSwam: SwimSwam’s Top 100 For 2025: Men’s #100-91