Greek Swimming Community Saves the Sport After Berlin Disappointment for Swimming World Cup 2023

The Swimming World Cup 2023 heads to its final stage in Budapest next week. While the first two legs in Berlin and Athens witnessed some amazing performances, the first day of the competition in Berlin was marred by a low attendance controversy. As the World Cup kicked off in Germany last week, the swimming community was shocked to witness an almost empty stadium amidst the likes of Michael Andrew, Adam Peaty, and Kaylee McKeown, all racing in Berlin.

Many fans highlighted that the meet tickets were quite expensive, and the competition had not been properly marketed and advertised in Germany. However, all these problems did not seem to affect the Athens leg of the competition, where Greek swimming fans filled the stadium to the brim in order to witness some of the highest standards of swimming.

Greek fans went all out at the Swimming World Cup 2023

After a disappointing crowd turnout on the opening day of the Swimming World Cup 2023 in Berlin, the Greek swimming community went all out in Athens. Throughout the Athens leg of the World Cup, the swimmers thanked the crowd for coming out in such huge numbers and motivating the athletes with their cheering.

In fact, the official account of the World Aquatics even highlighted the huge turnout in Greece on one of their Instagram story. The story was further captioned, “The crowd is on fire,” accompanied by a fire emoji that rightly describes the audience turnout in Athens. With the help of this impressive audience turnout, the swimmers were also able to provide some excellent performances to the Greek fans, which included shattering a number of World Cup records.

Host of World Cup records broken at Athens

During the Athens leg of the World Cup, a number of new World Cup records were set by the swimmers. Henrik Christiansen set a new meet record in the men’s 800m freestyle event as he clocked a time of 7:51.92. Following this, Siobhan Bernadette Haughey stopped the clock at 1:55.03 and also set a new meet record in the women’s 200m freestyle. While Kaylee McKeown has set three new World Cup records in Greece with her wins in the women’s 200m backstroke (2:06.02), 100m backstroke (57.63), and 50m backstroke (27.02). Adding to these incredible performances, Australia’s Lani Pallister set a new World Cup record of 1:55.73 in the women’s 1500m freestyle and China’s Zhang Yufei also set a new meet record in the women’s 100m butterfly with a time of 56.06.

Read more: Swimming World Cup vs World Athletics Championship: Who Is Dominating the Broadcast Numbers?

As Greek fans filled the stands in Athens, the swimmers did not disappoint with their performances. Now, as the competition heads to Budapest for its final leg, athletes will be hoping for more packed meets while fans will be hoping for more broken World Cup records.

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