Swimming embraces short and sharp with new Swim GP competition

Detailed summary

Traditional swimming competitions are no longer enough, as Swimming Australia continues to explore alternative formats with the Swim GP in Melbourne, and the return of the International Swimming League in London this December.

Swimming Australia's new four-team format swimming competition, Swim GP, gets underway in Melbourne on Friday night.

The International Swimming League, which was mothballed in 2021, will host an All Stars event in London in December.

Three-time Commonwealth Games champion Jenna Forrester is excited about the prospect of more events in the future.

No sport is immune from a fight for relevance in a jam-packed sporting marketplace.

And Swim GP is Swimming Australia's latest attempt to blend sporting entertainment, just 12 months on from its last foray into the genre, Australia vs The World in Brisbane.

This year, the nation is keeping things in-house with a slightly tweaked format involving teams of domestic swimmers.

"I think it's a really exciting opportunity," three-time Commonwealth Games champion Jenna Forrester told ABC Sport.

"I wasn't actually at Aus vs The World last year, so this is going to be my first time doing an event like this.

"But I got to watch some of it on TV and I thought that it was a really cool concept."

Opening of the article, excerpted from ABC News Australia. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.