In 2024, the World Aquatics Support Programme allocated USD 4.5 million to help advance aquatic sports at a local level, enabling the development of meaningful, long-term projects in collaboration with National Federations.

We look at some of the initiatives successfully implemented around the world to drive athlete development, participation at World Aquatics events and educate coaches and technical officials.

Athlete and coaching development initiatives

Many National Federations have delivered pioneering examples of how to support athletes in the development of their careers and enable them to participate at the biggest World Aquatics events.

In a fine example of collaboration between National Federations, the Andorran Age Group Swimming Team was able to join a seven-day training camp with the Portuguese Junior Swimming Team in Otopeni (ROM) in May 2024. This yielded impressive results, with the seven participating Andorran athletes each achieving personal bests in July 2024.

Nepal used the funding from the World Aquatics Support Programme to help deliver two major national competitions with record numbers of participants, helped by increased social media reach and an easier registration process. The first Nepal Aquatics Championships brought together 209 male athletes and 152 female athletes, while the 12^th Nepal Swimming Association Cup Swimming Championships featured 151 male athletes and 134 female athletes.

World Aquatics Support Programme funding was used by Samoa to support participation at junior and senior level of swimmers in international competitions, namely the Oceania Swimming Championships in the Gold Coast (AUS) and Junior Pan Pacific Championships in Canberra (AUS). This enabled a total of 14 athletes from Samoa to compete at the events, supported by coaches, managers, technical officials and media liaison.

Denmark ran an Athlete Talent Camp which featured 101 swimmers and 48 coaches to help facilitate knowledge sharing and networking. The social focus of the Camp complemented the training element, and enabled the best athletes and coaches from around the country to challenge each other and improve each other’s skills.

France meanwhile demonstrated an excellent use of data analysis through SelectID, by collecting data on athlete height, weight and sitting height at several junior championships and Benjamin championships (for pre-teens) across 550 athletes. This was with the aim of gaining a greater understanding of the morphological impact on the swimmers and their physiological evolution over time. It contributed to decisions on training load and making rankings on swimmers.

In Norway, an initiative to drive a greater number of female coaches proved successful. The National Federation covered participation fees for all female coaches on level 2 and level 3 education programmes – the level 2 course featured 11 female coaches out of 20 in total and the level 3 course a record 8 female coaches out of 15 in total. Speakers at the annual Coaches’ and Leaders’ Conference with participants from clubs across Norway stressed the importance of gender balance and encouraging women into coaching, and a total of 13 networking meetings were held in which 235 female coaches participated. Five female coaches also participated in a mentor programme.

Educational opportunities for athletes

Serbia launched a dedicated initiative to educate 20 athletes in artistic swimming and their parents on nutrition, supplementation and nutritional disorders, and created the first Serbian version of an app to calculate energy intake and to assist with meal planning.

Ireland delivered online workshops on employment skills for transitioning or retired athletes. These workshops focused on CV writing, enhancing LinkedIn profiles, and job search and future planning. Eight athletes attended the online workshops, but the content has been made available more widely through the Swim Ireland Athlete Hub.

Grassroots development

Mongolia’s “I Learned to Swim” programme reached thousands of grassroots participants, serving as a training programme to teach swimming to people of all ages on a large scale and share the positive impact of aquatic sports on quality of life. It emphasises water safety as a critical life skill, significantly reducing drowning incidents in participating communities. Specialised programmes will be developed in the coming years for seniors and people with disabilities.

American Samoa ran community water safety education and aquatic activity events. This included Open House Fridays in September with free use of the pool for children aged 10 and over for two hours at the Pala Lagoon Swimming Center, and the Aunu'u 'Splash' Mob pop-up activity – a 90-minute session providing a fun introduction to water safety and aquatic activities for residents aged 12 to 24 on the island of Aunu'u, where there is only a wharf but no pool. A Splash Mob for children aged 5 to 13 in December at the Pala Lagoon Swimming Center also focused on essential swimming skills.

Czechia created an Aquatics Infrastructure Manual to encourage municipalities across the country to build aquatics infrastructure in the coming years, aiming to serve as background for negotiations on building swimming pools. This outlines the criteria for a training short course pool, racing short course pool, training long course pool and racing long course pool, aligned with the rules of World Aquatics.