Swim Poll of the Week: What Was Your Favorite Swimming Event of 2021?

This is the Swim Poll of the Week for Friday, December 17, 2021, sponsored by Strechcordz Swim Training Products. In our last poll, we wanted to know: What was your favorite swimming event of 2021?

The major event on the 2021 swimming calendar was the Tokyo Olympics, where the United States’ Caeleb Dressel took home five gold medals and Australia’s Emma McKeon won seven overall medals, the most ever by a female athlete in any sport at a single Olympics. Other stars of the Olympics included the Australian duo of Ariarne Titmus and Kaylee McKeown, the United States’ Katie Ledecky, China’s Zhang Yufei, Japan’s Yui Ohashi, Russia’s Evgeny Rylov and the USA’s Bobby Finke.

Later in the year, the ISL season included 18 matches from late August through early December, and in the end, the trio of Sarah Sjostrom, Siobhan Haughey and Ilya Shymanovich led Energy Standard as the top three overall performers in the season. Energy Standard ended up winning a narrow matchup against the defending league champions, the Cali Condors, in the ISL final.

Finally, the U.S. Open, held concurrently with the ISL final, saw a few top American performers return to high-level competition following the Olympics. This was Ledecky’s first meet since Tokyo, and she won four events, while Finke and Regan Smith both competed in long course for the first time since making their Olympic debuts.