Underwater

“Horrifying stuff that we desperately need to know.” — Scott Ostler, sports columnist, San Francisco Chronicle


Backed by hundreds of interviews and thousands of pages of USA Swimming files subpoenaed by the FBI, Irvin Muchnick uncovers a generation of cover-ups involving some of the sport’s biggest names


The hundreds of millions who watch the thrilling spectacle of the Olympics are unaware of the extent to which their entertainment is undergirded by the systematic abuse by coaches of the underage athletes they develop. Many flag-waving fans gained some sense of the problem from the USA Gymnastics scandals, but for generations, the crimes in swimming have caused a much wider tsunami of pain and trauma around the world.


Backed by thousands of pages of FBI files and the author’s independent investigations, Underwater is the first comprehensive account of this ongoing and unacceptable phenomenon. Irvin Muchnick, a well-known chronicler of the dark side of sports, pulls together shocking stories involving some of the most iconic coaches in swimming history and some of the sport’s most celebrated programs — including Michael Phelps’s. The book lays the blame not just at the feet of individual villains but also at a system that casually commodifies and sexualizes the vulnerable and non-consenting, prioritizing the pursuit of athletic scholarships, Olympic medals, glory, and riches.


Underwater arrives just as a congressional commission has called for the first fundamental changes in the U.S. youth sports system in half a century. In the author’s estimation, this reform is the only real way to protect kids from the predation of the money-first stewards of professionalized sports.