The FINA World Championships are attended by the best swimmers from around the world, and are hotly contested. The United States currently holds the most medals by a fairly large margin, followed by Australia, China, and Sweden. Those who place bets on the various events often favour the American swimmers, but there can often be unexpected surprises and upsets, making the FINA Championships a favourite of bet makers globally.

The FINA World Swimming Championships is not to be mistaken with the FINA World Aquatic Championships. The Aquatic Championships deal with a number of water based disciplines, and is held in a comparably much larger 50m swimming pool. The FINA World Swimming Championships is held in the smaller 25 meter swimming pool, and deals only strictly with swimming events. For this reason the FINA Championships is also often referred to as the Short Course Worlds.

Swimming Events

The FINA World Swimming Championships (25m) is divided into men’s and women’s events. Four main strokes are featured when the championships do occur, but the event has not been reliably annual, but rather biannual, although this is also not definite.

Also, not all heats for each stroke are guaranteed, and there are often certain heats that are excluded or included, depending on circumstances. It’s best to find specific details on which heats will be featured in each stroke event, which is information that will be provided by official FINA outlets. The swimming strokes in the FINA World Championships are; freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, individual medley, freestyle relays, and medley relays.

Betting Options

Betting options for FINA World Swimming Championships events are generally straightforward, with bet makers placing bets on their favourite swimmer to win a particular heat. As with all sports betting, odds are based on the previous performance of swimmers, and their calculated chance of winning a particular race. If a high ranked swimmer is participating in an event, betting on them will always produce lower payouts, given that it is a low risk bet. In order to make good payouts bets must be placed on so called underdogs. Given the trend of swimmers increasing their performance, however, underdog bets have become more popular.

There was a massive increase in popularity in betting on swimming events around 2008. This was largely due to the swimmer Michael Phelps, who managed to win an amazing 8 consecutive gold medals. The occurrence was followed by many other swimmers showing increased performance, and world records being shattered on a regular basis. The increase in performance was attributed to new training techniques and technology, both of which helped swimmers reach new levels of success.

Bet Making Tips

Those looking to place bets on swimming events are encouraged to research swimmers and their recent levels of performance. Swimmers who have seen increased levels of performance in recent events are excellent betting choices, especially if that swimmer has not yet placed at least third. Balance out risk by placing a bet on a known high performer, as well as a favourite underdog.