Sources: USA Swimming to Replace CEO Tim Hinchey, Director Lindsay Mintenko
Sources confirm to Swimming World that USA Swimming CEO Tim Hinchey and national team managing director Lindsay Mintenko will not be retained in their positions.
Sports Illustrated first reported the news, and sources confirm that two of the leaders of the American program are being replaced, with an announcement possible as early as Thursday.
Hinchey’s contract was up for renewal in 2025. The timing allows a long runway for the 2028 Olympics, to be hosted by Los Angeles.
Hinchey was hired in 2017, arriving with experience in the NBA, NHL and MLS. He led the organization through the COVID-19 crisis, which brought a severe financial hit to many clubs across the country with a lost summer of swimming, and also oversaw efforts to diversify the organization’s membership in the face of the summer of 2020’s larger societal reckoning over race. Hinchey was the forefront of splitting the 2021 Olympic Trials into two waves for health and safety reasons, and also bringing the 2024 Olympic Team Trials to Indianapolis’ Lucas Oil Stadium, setting attendance records.
But concerns have been raised within USA Swimming’s membership, the volume increasing since the end of the Paris Olympics, over worrying trends. The larger swimming community faces a number of challenges, from the residual economic effects of the pandemic and changes in the developmental pathway underway at the NCAA level. Staff turnover within USA Swimming has also been a concern, and a regime change is hoped to be the final installment of that.
Mintenko, also hired to her current role 2017, is more directly responsible for the performance of Team USA’s elite athletes. The three-time Olympic medalist, under her maiden name Lindsay Benko, led the U.S. delegation to the Tokyo and Paris Olympics. She was responsible for hiring coaches Todd DeSorbo and Anthony Nesty to lead the 2024 team. Mintenko has been with USA Swimming since 2006.
There is no sugarcoating the disappointment of the Americans’ performance in Paris, where they won only eight golds. Though still ahead of Australia in gold medals by an 8-7 margin and with 28 total medals to 19 for Australia, it was an underwhelming performance. It included no individual men’s golds until Bobby Finke on the last day, a majority of swimmers recording much slower times than they had at the U.S. Olympic Trials and a record number of missed finals and semifinals for an American team.
Neither Mintenko, who was not made available to media at either Olympic Trials or the Olympics, nor the coaching staffs had many answers to what went wrong, and the pressure is on for the U.S. swimming program to attain stronger results on home soil in four years.
