Sharon van Rouwendaal became the first swimmer, male or female, to win two Olympic 10k titles when she claimed gold at the Paris Games with a late charge in the River Seine.
The 30-year-old Dutch athlete, who had begun her year by winning the world 5km and 10km titles in Doha, outsprinted her Australian rival and training partner Moesha Johnson to finish 5.5sec clear in 2hr 03min 34.2sec, adding a second Olympic title to the one she gained at the Rio 2016 Games.
Having won silver at the Tokyo 2020 Games, van Rouwendaal also became the first athlete to claim three Olympic medals.
Johnson took silver in 2:03:39.7 for silver ahead of Italy’s Ginevra Taddeucci, who clocked 2:03:42.8, with Brazil’s defending champion Ana Cunha fourth in 2:04:15.7 and Hungarian teenager Bettina Fabian fifth in 2:04:16.9.
In Doha van Rouwendaal had earned her 10km title by just 0.1sec from Spain’s Maria de Valdes, with Portugal’s Angelica Andre less than two seconds behind in bronze position.
Her 5km victory was a few fractions easier as she clocked 57:33.9 to finish 1.1sec clear of Australia’s Chelsea Gubecka, with Cunha third in 57:36.8.
Gubecka left Qatar with gold, however, as part of the victorious Australian quartet in the Team event, where Italy were second and Hungary third.
The European Aquatics Championships in Belgrade saw another double accomplished in the women’s 5km and 10km races, but on this occasion the golds went to Germany’s Leonie Beck, the 2023 world champion at both distances.
She held off Italy’s Barbara Pozzobon by 0.1sec to claim the 10km title, with Giulia Gabbrielles of Italy a close third, before beating Taddeucci to gold in the 5km, where bronze went to Hungary’s Fabian.
Pozzobon had her moment atop the podium, however, as she won the 25km race from Germany’s Lea Boy and Candela Sanchez of Spain.
The 4x1500m open water mixed relay title in Belgrade went to Hungary, who were represented by soon-to-be Olympic individual champion Kristof Rasovsky, David Betlehem, Mira Szimcsak and Bettina Fabian, with Italy and France taking respective silver and bronze.
Ines Delacroix of France won the overall title in the European Aquatics Open Water Swimming Cup 2024 following the final leg in Ražanac, Croatia.
Delacroix had arrived for the fifth and final leg with a 750-point lead in the standings thanks to finishing in the top six in each of the four preceding races.
A 13th-place finish was enough to secure the French swimmer the seasonal honours with total of 2980 points, with second place going to Lisa Pou of Monaco on 2750 and Delacroix’s compatriot Caroline Jouisse finishing third on 2250.
The race saw Germany’s Lea Boy earn her second successive series win.
The latter swimmer earned success also in the World Aquatics Open Water Swimming World Cup, where she was the top European, finishing second in the final women’s rankings, one place ahead of Taddeucci.
The concluding 10km race was won by Australia’s Paris 2024 silver medallist Johnson.
But the women’s overall World Cup title for 2024 went to Brazil’s Tokyo 2020 gold medallist Ana Marcela Cunha, for whom seventh place in the concluding race proved sufficient.
France’s Clemence Coccordano matched the feat of her compatriot Sacha Velly at the European Junior Open Water Swimming Championships in Vienna as she won the 10km women’s title narrowly ahead of Greece’s Georgia Makri. Italy’s Chiara Sanzullo took bronze.
All three medallists earned further honours at the World Aquatics Junior Open Water Championships held in Alghero, Italy in September.
Coccordano won 3km knockout sprint bronze, while Sanzullo and Makri finished second and third respectively in the 10km race.
In the 5km race Hungary’s Anna Bartalos and Mahila Spennato took silver and bronze respectively, while in the 7.5km race silver went to Clara Martinez De Salinas Pena and bronze to Napsugar Nagy of Hungary.