David Johnston's 3 Reasons Why He Transferred to Florida

2024 Olympian David Johnston recently announced his transfer from Texas to the University of Florida. The NCAA Champion explained there were 3 big reasons why he chose to leave Austin for Gainesville. One was plain and simple: the money. Johnston acknowledges that he didn't plan to be competing in the NCAA this long and sees why some would call it unfair. However, with the rules being what they are and new NIL opportunities sprouting up, Johnston wanted to go somewhere that could offer him income that could potentially supplement his future as he strives to qualify for the 2028 USA Olympic team, and it just so happened that UF was that place. In this conversation, Johnston is exceedingly honest about the fact that he is doing what is best for his career with this move, not only in the short term but moving toward LA28. In Gainesville, he will be training with arguably the best distance group in the world, swimming alongside Katie Ledecky, Bobby Finke, Ahmed Jaouadi, and Ahmed Hafnaoui, to name a few. He also opens up about dealing with the shoulder injury that sidelined him for the entire 2025-26 NCAA season.

You can listen to David Johnston's 3 Reasons Why He Transferred to Florida online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

David Johnston's 3 Reasons Why He Transferred to Florida is an episode from The SwimSwam Podcast by SwimSwam.

This episode is 25:33 long.

This episode was published on Apr 14, 2026.

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