New USA Swimming CEO Kevin Ring: ‘I’m Going to Call Michael Phelps Very Quickly’
A common thread in the professional experience of new USA Swimming CEO Kevin Ring, whose hiring was announced Thursday, is managing relationships.
The role he fills atop USA Swimming has seen a rupture in the link between the organization and some of its most high-profile Olympians, none bigger and more public about it than Michael Phelps. Ring is out to change that.
In an interview with Swimming World upon taking the job Thursday, Ring said he’s making outreach to Phelps and connection to alumni in particular a priority.
“I’m going to call Michael very quickly here,” Ring said Thursday. “I’m going to reach out to him. I want to hear more about them (his experiences). I think a lot of this for me is going to be looking forward.”
During the 2025 World Aquatics Championships, several alumni were highly critical of the state of USA Swimming, in terms of performances in the pool and the fact that the organization had been without a CEO since August 2024. Phelps, Rowdy Gaines and Ryan Lochte were among those most vocal. Phelps expounded on that criticism after the meet, mentioning that his efforts to reach out to the organization had been repeatedly rebuffed.
Ring singaled that stance will change once he takes the office on Sept. 17. Two factors are in his favor. First, he’s an outsider to swimming. He enters the job with few pre-conceived notions and will solicit the expertise of stakeholders in and around the organization. Of them, the 28-time Olympic medalist is hard to beat.
Second, Ring has a long track record of managing personal and corporate partnerships, from 12 years at IMG Consulting to a decade at PGA of America as its corporate partnerships manager. As he seeks to mesh his business skills with the swimming-specific needs of the organization, this would seem a pretty clear are in which to deploy that aptitude.
Ring gets the benefit of a fresh start. He said he was struck by the passion of Gaines and Phelps and their desire to improve conditions of the next generations of athletes. (With Phelps, there’s a commonality in their shared passion for golf, with Ring having met Phelps briefly at a Ryder Cup match in the past, though they don’t have an existing bond.)
“I think alumni have so much to add here,” Ring said. “I thought what Michael wrote was certainly something that needs to be taken to heart. I think it’d be foolish for me not to. So I’m looking forward to having a conversation with him, hearing from him, hopefully we talk at some point here soon, but it’s going to be at his timeline. I want to know how he wants to be part of this, in what he can lend to it, or if he just wants to be an ear and be heard.
“Whatever Michael wants to do is something that I think would be foolish of me not to listen to. And for me, it’s all looking forward. It’s going to be a conversation with him, and it’s a conversation with other of the prominent alumni to see what can happen and how we start anew, turn the page and work together to have the best success for USA Swimming.”
