There's enough difference between great swimmers targeting wholly different events to make any comparative exercise futile on a number of levels. At the same time, those very issues can contribute to the balance of all things when it comes to deciding which athlete might have an edge on another.

Five men celebrated a brace of World titles each in solo events at Singapore 2025, yet on the basis of standard measures when ranking excellent outcomes, two stood out from the rest: David Popovici and Léon Marchand.

The French winner of four Olympic titles at a home Games in Paris last year dropped two of his golden events to focus on the combination of all the skills and speed he's been working on. Marchand set a World record in the 200m medley, and although victory in both the 200 and 400 IM did not require a personal pioneering pace from him, travelling a second slower in the shorter final still meant that we witnessed the second fastest effort in history just 24 hours after the new and roaring global high bar.

The Romanian who became his nation's first male Olympic swimming champion in Paris when he won the 200m freestyle, set a European and Championship record in the 100m freestyle in a time that would have felt like sensational progress had it not been for the extraordinary events of Paris 2024:

Pandemonium In The Sprint Ranks: Dissecting An Inscrutable 46.40 - Part 1

In the tussle between those who roar out and hold on and those who hold fire and then spark when hunting down those who roar out, there had never been a swimmer capable of racing to the turn inside 22.5 and returning inside 24.5. There is one now - and how!

State Of Swimming +Craig Lord

Where Marchand's semi-final 200m thunderbolt was the warm-up for his victory by another wide margin in the 400IM, Popovici's 100m was the follow-up to his triumph in the 200m free in a fabulous scrap with one of Marchand's teammates in Texas, Luke Hobson (USA). The blue-ribband win marked the first 100-200m 'double double' in World Championship history.

Meaning: at Budapest 2022, the Romanian matched American Jim Montgomery's 1975 twin 100-200m crowns; at Singapore 2025, Popovici matched the feat to write another pioneering line in the history of global showcases dating back to 1973.

We haven't got there in our 2025 reviews yet, but it should come as no surprise to anyone that our top 5 male performances of the year are topped by Marchand's 200IM: he swam faster on all four strokes than Mark Spitz's world-record breaking 200m free for one of his record seven golds at the Munich 1972 Olympic Games:

M200IM: Marchand Monsters The Medley World Record: 1:52.69 - Faster Than Spitz On Freestyle

Léon Marchand left behind his best of 1:54.06, for Olympic gold as the hero of his Home Games last year, as he leapt over Lochte, the whole 1:53 zone, and landed beyond the speed of Spitz on the fastest stroke of all four - freestyle

State Of Swimming +Craig Lord

So, who gets the nod for campaign of the year?