Swimming at the 2024 Paris Olympics is over and the USA has topped the medal table. Before the final session, Team USA trailed Australia by six gold medals to seven, but two world records of Bobby Finke and the women’s 4×100 m medley relay cemented the United States’ lead at the ninth consecutive Olympic Games.
While the United States has dominated pool swimming at the Olympics so far, this competition showed that the rest of the world is catching up. In the first four days, all six individual titles contested up to that point were won by European men. The American men’s lone gold came at the last minute, thanks to Finke’s defense of his title in the 1500m freestyle.
Still, it will be a long time before any country can catch the dominant United States, with 607 Olympic swimming medals, 265 of which are gold. For comparison, Australia is in second place with a total of 230 medals, 76 of which are gold. (Even if you include the eight medals won by Australasia, a combined team of Australian and New Zealand athletes from 1908 to 1912, it makes little difference.)
United States of Backstroke
It should come as no surprise that the American swimming style is historically the most dominant: the backstroke. Before Paris, exactly 50% of all Olympic medals in the men’s 100-meter backstroke went to the USA, 15 of which were gold.
The results in Paris pushed the tally to 49.4%, but it’s still an impressive result considering that the men’s 100-meter backstroke is one of the oldest Olympic events, having been held since 1908, with only one suspension in 1964.
The 200m backstroke is a similarly dominant event for the USA, with 43.1% of all medals. This is an event where the world seems to have caught up, with an American missing the podium in Paris for the first time since 1992.
As a final note on the 200-meter backstroke: Apostolos Christou With the silver medal he secured the first medal for Greece in this discipline … and the first medal for Greece in a swimming discipline since 1896.
The great equalizer
In the men’s and women’s events, the 200-meter breaststroke is the most likely candidate for another country to overtake the United States in the medal count: 20.8% of medals go to women, while only 18.5% of medals go to men.
In second place for the women is the Soviet Union, which is not going to catch up anytime soon (13.9%, 16.7% if you include Russia), but the men seem far more vulnerable. Japan has already won six gold medals to five and holds 14.8% of all medals of all colors.
Kate Douglas won the 200 m breaststroke for the American women, while the American record holder Matt Fallon did not make it to the final.
The 200 m breaststroke is also a long-standing Olympic discipline; in Paris it was held for the 24th and 26th time for women and men respectively.
Jury on new events not yet decided
The United States has won 50% of the medals in the women’s 1500-meter freestyle, with one catch. Paris was only the second Summer Olympics to feature this event, and only six medals have been awarded so far. Two of them belong to Katie Ledecky.
The situation is similar in the men’s 800-meter freestyle, where the USA is tied with Italy in terms of the most medals. More specifically, Bobby Finke And Gregorio Paltrinieri won the most medals.
Although the USA currently has an impressive double top team with their training partners Ledecky and Finke, it would be presumptuous to claim that the Americans are as dominant in these disciplines as they are in the previously discussed backstroke.
The 4x100m medley relay is also a case with an asterisk. It is the only event in which the USA does not have the majority of medals. In Tokyo they missed the podium entirely due to a confusing line-up, but rebounded in Paris with gold and a world record.
The history of these three disciplines, which are the youngest in the pool swimming calendar with only two Olympic appearances, is still being written. Second is the women’s 4×200 freestyle relay, which was first held in 1996.
Finally
Even though the United States, especially the men, appeared far more vulnerable in Paris than in previous years, the American importance in the group cannot be denied in purely numerical terms.
But the United States only won single-digit gold medals at these Olympics, the fewest in its nine-year streak at the top of the table. 19 different countries won medals at the Games. All signs point to swimming becoming more competitive worldwide, which can only bode well for the sport’s continued growth.
