Europe’s male swimmers continued to make a huge global impact in a year featuring the World Aquatics Championships in Singapore and the European Short Course Swimming Championships Lublin 2025 as well as the usual World Cup racing programme.
Of the 20 men’s events contested in Singapore, 12 were won by individuals or teams from Europe, with France’s quadruple Paris 2024 champion Leon Marchand, his team-mate Maxime Grousset and Romania’s David Popovici each winning two individual titles. Marchand shattered the 14-year-old world 200m individual medley record in the process.
Hungary’s Hubert Kos, Germany’s Lukas Martens, Simone Cerasuolo of Italy and neutral athlete Kliment Kolesnikov also won gold, with Great Britain’s Olympic champions in the 4x200m freestyle repeating the trick and the neutral athletes quartet taking the 4x100m medley title.
There were also outstanding performances in short course racing. Kos set world records in the 200m and 100m backstroke en route to winning the overall men’s World Aquatics Swimming World Cup title with a perfect record, and Caspar Corbeau of The Netherlands became the first to better two minutes in the 200m breaststroke as he clocked 1:59.52 at the Toronto World Cup.
In Lublin earlier this month Switzerland’s Noe Ponti won three titles, just as he had in the previous edition of the Championships two years earlier, while his rival Grousset claimed two golds. Ireland’s Olympic 800m freestyle champion Daniel Wiffen, returning to competition after having his appendix removed, won the 1500m title after overtaking long-term leader Zalan Sarkany, the world short course champion, in the last 100m. Sarkany then reversed the result in the 800m freestyle.
Marchand excelled himself in the 200m individual medley semi-finals in Singapore, lowering the world record by 1.31 seconds as he clocked 1:52.69 to better the previous world record of 1:54.00 set in 2011 by Ryan Lochte of the United States. The 23-year-old Texas-based athlete added gold in the 400m medley.
Popovici, 20, repeated his 2022 world double in the 100m and 200m freestyle, lowering his own European record in the former event to 46.51 – just 0.11 off the world record.
Grousset won the 50m butterfly in a national record of 22.48 and the 100m butterfly in a European record of 49.62, both times beating Ponti into second place.
Kos added the world 200m butterfly title to his Olympic title in a European record of 1:53.19 and Germany’s Lukas Martens won the 400m freestyle title three months after becoming the first swimmer to go under 3:40.00 with a world record of 3:39.96.
Kliment, who won silver and bronze at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, earned his first world gold this year, finishing the 50m backstroke in a Championship record of 23.68, while Cerasuolo also won a maiden world title as he clocked 26.54 in the 50m breaststroke.
Earlier in the summer the second European Aquatics U23 Championships – staged at the Samorin Olympic training centre in Slovakia – offered an ideal opportunity for Popovici to tune up for the Worlds, and he took full advantage as he lowered the 100m freestyle European record to 46.71 en route to a 100/200m freestyle double.
Ireland’s 18-year-old John Shortt won 100m backstroke gold at the EA U23 Championships before winning the 100m/200m backstroke double at the World Aquatics Junior Championships in Otopeni and then claiming a first senior international title by winning the 200m backstroke in Lublin in a world junior record of 1:47.89.
Germany’s 18-year-old Johannes Liebmann set a world junior record of 3:37.39 in the men’s 400m freestyle and registered two more in the men’s 800m freestyle, clocking 7:30.94 in qualifying and 7:30.47 in finishing fourth.
Nikita Sheremet of Ukraine set successive World and European junior 50m freestyle records of 20.84 and 20.81, with the latter time earning him a share of individual silver.
And another 18-year-old, Britain’s Filip Nowacki set successive European junior records of 2:03.75 and 2:02.96 in the men’s 200m breaststroke. Nowacki had earlier won the 100m/200m breaststroke double at the EA Junior Championships in Samorin and the World Aquatics Junior Championships.
Turkey’s 17-year-old Paris 2024 finalist Kuzey Tuncelli won the men’s 800m/1500m freestyle double in the European juniors, and Lithuania’s Tajus Juska also earned two individual golds in the 50m freestyle and 100m butterfly.
Mike Rowbottom for European Aquatics
