France’s Marc-Antoine Olivier won the overall men’s title in the 2024 World Aquatics Open Water Swimming World Cup series after a grand finale in Neom, Saudi Arabia that left European male athletes filling the top 11 places in the overall standings.
Third place in the Red Sea race was enough to secure the overall honours for Olivier as he finished one position behind fellow countryman and world junior champion Sacha Velly in a men’s 10km race won by Germany’s Tokyo 2020 champion Florian Wellbrock.
Germany’s Lea Boy and Ginevra Taddeucci of Italy finished respectively second and third in the final women’s rankings after taking those same positions in a concluding 10km race won by Australia’s Paris 2024 silver medallist Moesha 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.
Olivier, 28, who won 5km and 10km silvers at the World Aquatics World Championships in Doha and added 5km silver at the European Aquatics Championships in Belgrade, finished seventh at his home Olympics.
But he secured a prestigious victory with a finely-judged performance in his final race of the season, finishing just under eight seconds behind Wellbrock and holding off the strong challenge of the three Italian swimmers who filled the next three places – Marcello Guidi, Dario Verani and Fabio Dalu.
The Frenchman finished the series with 3,100 points, with Verani second on 2850 and Guidi third on 2558.
The Italian strength in depth in this category was clear from the fact that they supplied six of the top 11 men, with Andrea Filadelli fourth, Pasquale Sanzullo fifth, Ivan Giovannoni ninth and Domenico Acerenza joint tenth with Wellbrock.
Brazil’s Matheus Melecchi shared 12th place with another Italian – Gregorio Paltrinieri.
Wellbrock concluded the competition by earning another victory as he helped Germany win the 4x1500m relay title ahead of Italy and France.
“It was my first competition of the season,” said Wellbrock, who missed medals at the World Championships and Paris 2024 Games and is now targeting the World Short Course Championships that start in Budapest on December 10.
“It was so important to race here especially after my disappointing Olympics and for sure I’m really excited to race in short course in December.”
In the final women’s standings Boy finished on 2648 points, 102 behind Cunha, with Taddeuci third on 2200 from Hungary’s Bettina Fabian, who totalled 2150.
European women occupied nine of the top 11 places, with France’s Caroline Laure Jouisse finishing joint sixth with Johnson, Germans Jeannette Spiwoks and double European champion Leonie Beck eighth and ninth, Monaco’s Lisa Pou tenth and France’s Ines Delacroix 11th.