An extraordinary year for male European swimmers peaked at the Paris 2024 Olympics, where they won 11 of the 14 individual titles, with home athlete Leon Marchand becoming the French poster boy for the Games in securing four of them.

The 22-year-old from Toulouse accomplished each victory in an Olympic record time as well as rsetting two European records and helping the host nation to bronze in the men’s 4x100m medley relay.

Marchand thus became the most successful athlete competing at this summer’s Olympics.

The year ended with heroics from another European talent as 23-year-old Noe Ponti of Switzerland, who had set two world records heading into the World Aquatics Swimming Championships (25m) in Budapest, was named as male swimmer of the event after setting three more world records en route to winning three golds.

The Games glory had been preceded by outstanding European efforts at February’s World Aquatics Championships in Doha, where Ireland’s Daniel Wiffen and Diogo Ribeiro of Portugal each won two titles, with Ukraine’s Vladyslav Bukhov and Spain’s Hugo Gonzalez also earning global golds.

For Wiffen, who won the world 800m and 1500m titles, there was further global gold ahead in Paris as he won the 800m in an Olympic and European record of 7:38.19, adding bronze in the 1500m behind Italy’s Gregorio Paltrinieri, who had won 1500m bronze.

Romania’s David Popovici beat Matt Richards of Great Britain to the Olympic 200m freestyle title by 0.02sec, also earning 100m freestyle bronze.  

Lukas Martens of Germany won the 400m freestyle gold, his first global title, and Europe dominated in the backstroke events as Thomas Ceccon of Italy won over 100m and Hungary’s 21-year-old Hubert Kos took 200m gold ahead of Apostolos Christou of Greece.

Ceccon’s compatriot Nicolo Martinenghi won the 100m breaststroke title, clocking 59.03 in an extraordinary race where Britain’s world record holder Adam Peaty, seeking a third successive Olympic gold in this event, finished joint second with Nik Fink of the United States on 59.05.

Hungary also ended with two individual Olympic champions as Kristof Milak won the 100m butterfly following an intense battle with Canada’s Josh Liendo in what was one of the races of the year.

Marchand won his first gold in the 400m individual medley, setting an Olympic record of 4:02.95 to eclipse the mark set by Michael Phelps. He followed this up with Olympic titles in the 200m butterfly, in an Olympic record of 1:51.21, and the 200m breaststroke, in an Olympic and European record of 2:05.85, with both races taking place less than two hours apart – an unprecedented feat in the Games.

The fourth title for the French idol came in the 200m individual medley, where he set an Olympic and European record of 1:54.06. His historic performance at Paris 2024 was honoured by him being chosen to recover the Olympic flame and extinguish the cauldron in the Closing Ceremony.

Other individual Olympic medals came from Britain’s Ben Proud and Florent Manaudou of France, who took respective silver and bronze in the 50m freestyle, and Caspar Corbeau of The Netherlands, who was third in the 200m breaststroke, while Milak earned silver behind Marchand in the 200m butterfly and Britain’s Duncan Scott followed him home in the 200m medley.

Scott finished the Games with gold as part of victorious British 4x200m relay team along with James Guy, Tom Dean and Richards. The quartet thus became the first British relay team in either swimming or athletics to retain an Olympic title, and the first ever quartet to defend an Olympic gold medal with exactly the same line-up.

Ceccon added a bronze as part of the Italian 4x100m freestyle team.

European performances at the 2024 World Aquatics Championships in Doha had offered strong clues as to the levels of performance that would be witnessed throughout the year.

Wiffen was only the fourth male swimmer to win the 800/1500m double. The 50m and 100m freestyle saw fierce competition, with Italy’s Alessandro Miressi earning100m freestyle silver, and Great Britain’s Proud 50m taking freestyle bronze.

Ribeiro produced a startling performance at the age of 19 as he won 50m and 100m butterfly gold.

Meanwhile in the relays Italy took 4x100m freestyle silver and 4x100m medley bronze.

For many of the continent’s top performers the European Aquatics Championships held in Belgrade from June 17 to 23 offered a perfect opportunity to get into top shape for the impending Olympics.

Popovici offered clear evidence of his stellar form as he won the 100m and 200m freestyle titles, while in the 200m butterfly Milák triumphed in 1:54.43, closely followed by Poland’s Krzysztof Chmielewski in 1:54.78.

Milak also took 100m butterfly gold. He, along with compatriot Kos, was one of the stand-out performers throughout the week as the nation topped the medal table with ten gold medals.

Greece finished second in the medal table with five gold medals, and it was Christou and Evangelos Makrygiannis who flew the flag for the nation in the backstroke events with two trips to the podium apiece. Stergios Marios Bilas and Kristian Gkolomeev also took gold medals throughout the week in a strong showing.

Switzerland’s Noe Ponti set three world records and earned three titles at the World Aquatics Swimming Championships (25m) in Budapest. Credit: Aniko Kovacs/World Aquatics

The season concluded with Ponti’s blitz in Budapest. Having set two 50m butterfly world records in World Cup races preceding the Championships he continued in the same vein as he set world records in the semi-finals and final of that event, respectively 21.43 and 21.32.

He added the 100m butterfly title, lowering the world record to 47.71 in the final, and earned a third gold in the 100m medley, where he set a Championship record of 50.33.

The hosts celebrated hugely as Zalan Sarkany and Kos won gold in the 800m freestyle and 200m backstroke respectively.

And securing one of the most emotional victories of the week was Spain’s Carles Coll Marti, as he won Spain’s first gold medal in the competition for 10 years in the 200m breaststroke.

It was the neutral athletes who took the most gold medals from the continent at the competition, though. Miron Lifintsev (50m and 100m backstroke) and Ilya Borodin (400m individual medley) both topped the podium, with Lifintsev also being joined by Kirill Prigoda, Andrey Minakov and Egor Kornev in setting a world record of 3:18.68 in the men’s 4x100m medley relay.