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Best Wishes For A Healthy, Abundant 2025 After An Olympic Year Topped By 'Léon, Léon' & A Summer Of Plenty
Summer McIntosh, of Canada, and Léon Marchand, of Olympic hosts France, topped the ranks of the best swimmers in the world in an epic 2024 season in the pool

Best Wishes For A Healthy, Abundant 2025 After An Olympic Year Topped By 'Léon, Léon' & A Summer Of Plenty

In the first week of the new year, State of Swimming will reflect on the year gone by in our SOS Annual Awards, starting with a review of the best swimmers of the year. Sincere thanks to readers who support or work - here's to growth and deeper understanding in 2025

Craig Lord profile image
by Craig Lord

It was not that the competition for best swimmers of the year was lacking in any sense but as we enter 2025 with a sensational 2024 in the rearview mirror, there was no other choice to make than Summer McIntosh as best female swimmer and Léon Marchand as best male swimmer as the two athletes who stood out in the sea of outstanding efforts all about them.

Profiles on both will start our SOS Annual Awards for 2024 in the week that follows New Year celebrations after an Olympic year of swimming to remember for its Summer of plenty, its 'Léon, Léon' in Léon's Paris 2024 den, the fantastic French crowd in a capital that made Marchand the hero of a home Games and spread the swimming word far wider and with greater gusto than any other event or moment could possibly have done.

Our awards will also consider those who came closest to the top two, those who provided the closest challenge in the heat of the moment, those who steered and guided the swimmers to be the very best versions of themselves, in the pool and beyond it in the spirit of Kipling's If, as in:

"If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;   
    If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;   
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same ..."

... and so on.

Among the mentors, we will not only consider those who led the results the world celebrated under Olympic lights but those who contributed to great success, as well as those who fought their corner in a sport in need of better governance, greater integrity and a level of transparency that no reform process has yet managed to muster.

To 2025! With sincere thanks to you, readers, and in particular those whose support helps to keep us here and roll out some new approaches to our coverage in the year ahead. May it be one of fruitful process, abundant outcomes, deeper understanding and learning curves that lead us all to better paths and places.

Craig Lord profile image
by Craig Lord

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