At the halfway mark of the swimming program at Marine Messe Hall A in Fukuoka, the Australian team has the inside track to break the United States of America’s streak of ten successive championships topping the swimming medal tally.
Australia currently sits first with 6 Gold, 3 Silver & 0 Bronze medals. The Rohan Taylor-led team have asserted their dominance in the pool over the first four days of racing, with their medal haul of four gold on the opening night of competition the nation’s best single session at a World Aquatics Championships.
Should Australia close out the competition with as much success as they started, it would be only the second time in twenty World Aquatics Championships that Australia have topped the medal tally. For the past ten championships the United States of America have reigned supreme, with the last team other than the USA to top the medal tally being Australia, here in Fukuoka, back in 2001.
China currently sits second on the medal tally with 4 Gold, 0 Silver & 4 Bronze medals, a marked improvement from Budapest last year where the Chinese won a single gold medal through Yang Junxuan in the Women’s 200m Freestyle.
Despite having won the most medals overall in the pool, being seventeen to date, the United States of America are sitting third on the medal tally at the halfway mark of competition with 3 Gold, 7 Silver & 7 Bronze.
France currently rank fourth with 2 Gold, 0 Silver & 1 Bronze medal, already matching their two gold medal haul from last year, and Italy closes out the top five with 1 Gold, 4 Silver & 0 Bronze, still four gold medals short of their five gold return in Budapest.
Tunisia, New Zealand and Portugal are the three new entrants on the 2023 medal tally that did not feature last year in Budapest, with Diogo Ribeiro’s silver medal in the Men’s 50m Butterfly a first-ever World Aquatics Championships medal for the Portuguese team.