USA Swimming has confirmed the pool roster that will represent the host nation at the Pan Pacific Championships in Irvine, California from 12 to 15 August, and it is about as strong a domestic lineup as the programme could have assembled two years out from a home Olympic Games.
A roster with no obvious weakness
The 26-strong women’s team is headed by Katie Ledecky, Kate Douglass, Gretchen Walsh and Katharine Berkoff, four athletes who between them hold world titles across freestyle, breaststroke, butterfly and backstroke. Douglass is entered in five events, an extraordinary programme even by her standards, and Walsh arrives having lowered the 50m freestyle world record in Rome earlier this season.
Alongside them sit Torri Huske, Regan Smith, Claire Curzan, Simone Manuel, Alex Walsh, Katie Grimes and Emma Weyant, a group that covers essentially every event on the women’s schedule with a legitimate medal contender. Rylee Erisman, Leah Hayes and Skyler Smith represent the next wave.
The men’s roster of 26 is led by Luca Urlando, the sole individual American gold medallist at the last World Championships, returning in his signature 200m butterfly. Bobby Finke anchors the distance events, Luke Hobson and Carson Foster handle the middle-distance freestyle and individual medley programme, and Jack Alexy and Chris Guiliano provide the sprint relay firepower. Shaine Casas, Dare Rose, Josh Matheny and Michael Andrew round out a squad with genuine depth in every stroke.
Why Irvine matters
This is the first time the United States has hosted a major international long-course meet since the 2010 Pan Pacs, which were also held at the William Woollett Jr. Aquatics Center in Irvine. It is also the first edition of the quadrennial championship since 2018, the event having fallen victim to a pandemic-disrupted calendar and a congested international schedule.
The venue is modest by championship standards, with two 50-metre pools and a permanent capacity of around 700 that expands to roughly 4,000 with temporary seating. That intimacy is part of the appeal. Pan Pacs has always been a slightly informal championship, a meeting of the Pacific Rim swimming powers rather than a full world championship, and Irvine suits that character. A 10km open water championship will also feature, with USA Swimming naming a separate eight-member roster for it.
The competition arrives too
The field will be genuinely serious. Australia, Canada, Japan, Brazil, China and South Africa all send full teams, and the Canadian squad in particular arrives with momentum. Summer McIntosh headlines a 44-strong Canadian roster having broken the oldest world record in women’s swimming in the 200m butterfly this season, and she has spent recent weeks describing herself as a work in progress rather than a finished article. Australia’s sprint programme remains the closest thing the Americans have to a peer group in the freestyle relays.
That combination of American depth and Australian and Canadian quality is what makes Pan Pacs worth watching in a year without a World Championships in the same window. World Aquatics heads to Beijing for the next long-course worlds with a ten-lane trial format, so Irvine effectively serves as the season’s competitive peak for the swimmers who are not chasing that meet.
Two years out
The subtext to all of this is Los Angeles 2028, now almost exactly two years away and roughly forty miles up the freeway from Irvine. For the American squad, a home Pan Pacs is a low-stakes rehearsal for the conditions, the time zone and the domestic attention that a home Olympics will bring in far greater volume.
For the younger names on the roster, it is also an audition. Olympic teams in swimming are decided in a single brutal week of trials, but the reputations that shape selection are built at meets like this one. Irvine in August will tell us a good deal about who is on track for 2028 and who has work to do.
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