Swimming has returned to Nine’s Wide World of Sports for the first time since 2008 ahead of this year’s World Aquatics Championships beginning on Saturday night our time in Budapest, Hungary.
Although, they did show some swimming when Nine broadcasted the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, Great Britain, a decade ago.
We first heard that rights capture back in January this year when Nine previewed their wide range of sports coverage content for 2022 while we watched the Summer of Tennis during the Australian Open warm-up tournaments.
This upcoming event was slated to take place late last month in Fukofuka, Japan, at the time; the place where Australia topped the medal charts during the 2001 World Championships just over two decades ago.
However, FINA postponed the Fukafoka hosting rights to next year a few weeks later before they called in Budapest as this year’s replacement host.
Nonetheless, Nine will still be covering it where they will put the swimming live on their free digital channels via 9Gem & 9Go that can be streamable on 9Now – while the other aquatic categories such as Open Water Swimming, Synchronised Swimming, Diving and Water Polo will also be a live & free streaming exclusive to 9Now.
We’ve gotta say that this is the perfect time right now to cheer them on when the Australian Dolphins Swim Team was simply outstanding at the Tokyo Olympics last year in 2nd behind the US with 9 gold, 3 silver & 9 bronze at a total of 21 medals.
They also bounced back also in 2nd just behind the all-dominant US champions three years ago when the last World Swimming Championships were held in Gwangju, South Korea; 5 gold, 9 silver and 5 bronze.
It will be interesting to see if the Dolphins can end Team USA’s long-running stranglehold up top over the next week, before the rest of the aquatic sports decide the overall result.
And shoutout to Ray Warren aka Rabs who just retired recently following a decorated 55-year career behind the mic.
He used to call some memorable moments there when Nine first covered swimming back in the 1990s to mid 2000s alongside his usual rugby league commentary up until his final game at the NRL Grand Final last year – including Susie O’Neill’s world record in the 200m butterfly at the 2000 Olympic trials.
It just won’t be the same without him as we will see a couple of new faces for studio coverage over the first week, as well as either using their own voices or just taking the world feed commentary.