The World Aquatics organization has announced a three-stop Swimming World Cup Series for 2024 that will take place in southeast Asia. This marks a departure from the traditional format of the series, which has seen a decrease in stops since its peak around the turn of the century. The three meets will be held in Shanghai, China from October 18-20, Incheon, South Korea from October 24-26, and Singapore from October 31 to November 2.
The decision to have a compact three-meet series seems to be in response to an increasingly crowded international swimming calendar. With China hosting two of the meets and Singapore hosting one, this series will bring together some of the top swimmers from across Asia. Additionally, it is noted that China sent most of its elite swimmers to the 2023 World Cup Series right after the Asian Games. This could have been a foreshadowing of the decision to have all three meets of the series in southeast Asia for 2024.
Incheon, which hosted the 2014 Asian Games, is a new city in the World Cup Series, while Shanghai and Singapore have hosted previous events. The men’s and women’s series winners for 2023 were China’s Qin Haiyang and Australia’s Kaylee McKeown respectively. It is noteworthy that this year’s post-Olympic series will return to its traditional short course meters format in preparation for the upcoming World Short Course Swimming Championships that will take place in Budapest, Hungary in 2024.