Swimmers love to confuse hard work with talent. I have no doubt that all of these Olympic swimmers are working very, very hard. The problem for the swimmer crowd is that medals for hard work and training time are highly correlated with sports that don't see a lot of talent.
Do you know how hard Usain Bolt works? Neither do I, nor do I care. He's better at something that every person who has ever lived on this planet has tried at some point in their life.
We could train our young distance runners as hard as we train our young swimmers, and all but one or two of them would still get their ass handed to them by the rest of the world.
American has an insane amount of talent playing soccer from a very young age. These kids work very, very hard. Unfortunately, that sport is played by the entire world, so hard work isn't enough.
The homogeneity of the swim events speaks for itself. Golfers spend a ton of time honing their craft, but one look at a PGA Tour field, and even a cursory understanding of world economics, and you know you're not seeing a deep talent pool. Same for triathlon, car racing, etc. In my experience, all of these other niche sports are totally comfortable with their place in the global talent pool, but I don't think the swim community is ready to appreciate this.
But, yes, I will admit that I'm bitter that swimming gets all of this attention. I'm hopeful that the coverage will be as fawning with respect to our less-than-suburban athletes, but I'm doubtful.