Twelve months after the start of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, aquatics remains one of the defining pillars of the Games. Across five disciplines – swimming, diving, water polo, artistic swimming and open water swimming – 1,439 athletes from 191 countries competed in 49 medal events. Performances were world-class. Records were broken. And swimming returned to the River Seine for the first time in over a century.
Swimming
An impressive 19 National Olympic Committees (NOCs) earned medals in swimming. The USA topped the table with 28 medals, including eight golds. Australia followed with 18 medals, including seven golds, six of them in women’s events.
Leon Marchand delivered four gold medals for France, becoming one of the standout performers of the Games. Ireland’s Daniel Wiffen became the nation’s first male Olympic swimming champion with victory in the 800m Freestyle. Tatjana Smith of South Africa won gold in the 100m Breaststroke, ensuring the Games concluded with swimming champions from all five continents – an astonishing display of the strength of aquatic sports worldwide.
Over nine days of competition at Paris La Défense Arena, 21 Olympic records, 19 continental records and four world records were set.
Diving
In a remarkable display of talent, Team China won gold in all eight diving events. Great Britain had its most successful Olympic diving campaign to date, with five medals – a national record. Divers from Great Britain and the People’s Republic of China cumulatively exceeded the 10,000-point mark with their scores in the eight diving events at the state-of-the-art Olympic Aquatics Centre. This serves as an illustration of the high level of diving consistently produced throughout the Games.
Mexico and Australia also performed strongly, scoring close to 9,000 and 7,500 points respectively across their events.
Artistic Swimming
Artistic swimming saw the widest spread of Olympic medalists in 20 years. For the first time in five Olympic Games, three continents were represented on the artistic swimming podium.
Water Polo
In the women’s tournament, Spain won gold with a tournament-leading 94 goals from 224 shots (42% accuracy). Their top goal scorer, Bea Ortiz, recorded 19 goals from 34 shots. The tournament top goal scorer, Alice Williams, scored 21 goals from 48 shots, which accounted for more than 40 percent of Australia’s goals.
On the men’s side, Dušan Mandić of Serbia was the top goal scorer with 26 from 49 shots, a 53 percent accuracy rate that helped his team win gold.
Open Water Swimming
For the first time since 1923, Olympic competition returned to the River Seine. Open water swimmers raced in the heart of the French capital, marking the completion of a long-term project to return the river to swimmable condition.
Following Sharon van Rouwendaal's success in the Women’s 10km, the Netherlands remain the most successful open water swimming nation at the Olympic Games. This was their fourth gold medal since the sport was added to the Olympic programme for Beijing 2008.
Hungary became the second nation to win multiple gold medals in open water swimming since its Olympic debut, with Kristof Rasovszky triumphing in the Men’s 10km.
Following the conclusion of the Games, the Seine has also since reopened to the public, establishing it as one of Paris 2024’s most enduring legacies. From 5 July and continuing through August, three designated sections of the city have transformed into “Paris Plages” – urban swimming sites complete with sandy beaches, bungalows, and palm trees. Read more here.
Digital Reach
The Paris 2024 Olympics delivered the strongest digital performance at an Olympic Games in World Aquatics history. Over the period of competition, World Aquatics platforms saw:
That represents an increase of more than 1,800% in social media impressions compared to the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020. For 24 consecutive days, video output averaged more than 1 million views per hour.
The World Aquatics website was the home for longer-form content and live results. Taking into account the World Aquatics Championships over the past year in Fukuoka (2023) and Doha (2024), where many athletes and National Olympic Committees qualified for the Paris 2024 Games, the website generated over 1.5 million unique visitors who recorded more than 34 million page views over the event period for these three events. During that time, the World Aquatics website has generated 48.2 million page views from 2.6 million active users who spend an average of 4 minutes and 52 seconds per session – making the year encompassing Paris 2024 the most followed period of aquatic sports ever.
One Year On
Paris 2024 was a true celebration of aquatic sports. Medal distribution reflected the strength of all the sports globally. National, World and Olympic records fell across the 24 days. New champions emerged.
As the post-Paris 2024 legacy continues, athletes are now competing at the World Aquatics Championships – Singapore 2025, the next major step in the journey towards LA28. Keep up to date on all the action here!