There's a new No. 1 in the Best American Swim Cities list

There is a new No. 1 metro area in USA Swimming’s annual list of the Best American Swim Cities, and San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, Calif. is the 2016 winner.

USA Swimming annual compiles data and makes a statistical ranking based on several factors, among them: percentage of active swimmers and swim clubs, number of accessible pools and volume of top-level swimmers from the area. In that latter category, it was a very good year for San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara. In addition to a number of competitors on the junior-national level, the region was well-represented on the national and Olympic level as well. In fact, the Santa Rosa Neptunes club team had a pair of U.S. Olympians in four-time medalist Maya DiRado and breastroker Molly Hannis.

DiRado, who won two gold medals, one silver and one bronze in Rio de Janeiro, described what made Santa Rosa and the surrounding area such a hotbed for swimming.

“You have both the supply and the demand,” said DiRado, a 2014 Stanford graduate. “There are lots of pools, and the weather helps. It’s not too cold, so people want to go outside and enjoy the weather. Californians have a great, healthy outdoor lifestyle.

“It also helps to have Stanford and Cal so close by. They have great programs that help cultivate interest. It leads to little kids wanting to swim.”

The rest of the national top 10 swimming cities: Ann Arbor, Mich., the previous champion; Bridgeport-Stamford, Norwalk, Conn.; Austin-Round Rock, Texas; Madison, Wisc.; Washington, D.C.-Arlington-Alexandria, Va.; Raleigh-Cary, N.C.; Fort Collins-Loveland, Colo.; Indianapolis-Carmel, Ind.; San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, Calif.

The full list of the Top 50 swimming cities can be found at USA Swimming.org.