Tuesday, 24 December 2024

2024 Swammy Awards: European Female Swimmer of the Year — Sarah Sjostrom | SwimSwam

By Sophie Kaufman on SwimSwam

See all of our 2024 Swammy Awards here.

At the Paris Olympic Games, spectators watched as Leon Marchand, Summer McIntosh, and Pan Zhanle asserted themselves as three of the biggest names to watch in international swimming heading into the next Olympic quad. The three are young swimmers who all reached a new level in their careers at the Games. But that wasn’t the only storyline playing out over the eight days of competition.

Fans were also treated to Swedish superstar Sarah Sjostrom solidifying her legacy as the sprint queen as she struck gold in the 50 and 100 freestyle, winning her second and third Olympic titles. Sjostrom’s Paris performance earns her the 2024 Swammy for European Female Swimmer of the Year. She was the only European woman to win gold in the pool at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Sjostrom focused on the 50 freestyle in the lead-up to the 2024 Olympic Games, where she can’t also showcase her supremacy in the 50 butterfly. So, it was a surprise to many to see her on the entry list for the 100 freestyle. Even after the women’s 4×100 freestyle relay, Sjostrom wasn’t sure that she’d swim the event, but her coach “insisted” and that late entry turned into an Olympic gold from lane seven and one of the feel-good moments of the Games.

“I never thought that a 30-year-old woman could win this event. I thought that you had to be, I don’t know, 20 or something,” Sjostrom told NBC Sports. “I’ve done many things in my career, but I’ve never ever surprised myself as much as I did here.”

Sjostrom owns the world record in the women’s 100 freestyle, but this marked her first Olympic title in the event and her second overall. In Rio, she earned her first Olympic gold in the women’s 100 butterfly (an event where she formerly held the world record).

For as much as Sjostrom surprised herself in the 100 freestyle, it was not a surprise to see her dominate the 50 freestyle. Sjostrom has been sub-24 seconds in the 50 freestyle 39 times in her career, including her three swims in Paris. She owns the top seven performances in the event and swam five of them in the last 18 months.

Sjostrom paced the field through all three rounds of the 50 freestyle at the Games. She swam an Olympic record 23.66 in the semifinals before storming to her first Olympic gold in the event with a 23.71. Her Olympic record is the third-fastest swim all-time, and her final time the seventh-fastest.

The Paris Olympics were the highlight of Sjostrom’s year, but she also attended the 2024 World Championships. There, she struck gold in the 50 freestyle and butterfly. At the 2023 World Championships, Sjostrom overtook Michael Phelps as the most decorated swimmer at the long-course World Championships. With her two wins in Doha, she extended her lead in those rankings as she’s now earned 23 World Championships medals.

Swimming fans commonly use Olympic medals as a metric for defining greatness in the sport. Sjostrom’s consistent speed over her long and decorated career earned her the title of “sprint queen” with the lone Olympic medal around her neck. By winning Olympic gold in the sprint freestyle events for the first time, Sjostrom solidified her legacy as one of the greatest sprinters the sport has ever seen.

Honorable Mentions:

  • Isabel Gose, Germany: Isabel Gose has been making steady improvements in the women’s distance freestyle events over the last couple of years, consistently making finals at the World Championship level. She hit her peak for Paris and kicked off the Games with a fifth-place finish and national record in the 400 freestyle (4:02.14). Gose was also fifth in the 800 freestyle, but the highlight of her Games was the 1500 freestyle, where she earned her first Olympic medal, taking bronze in a German record 15:41.16. Earlier in the year, Gose earned her first medals at Worlds, taking silver in the 800 freestyle and bronze in the 400/1500 freestyle. The 22-year-old capped her year by winning her first World title, touching first in the women’s 1500 freestyle at the 2024 Short Course World Championships. She also earned silver in the 800 freestyle during the six-day championships in Budapest.
  • Anastasiya Kirpichnikova, France: La Défense Arena was never louder than when a French swimmer won an Olympic medal. The home nation had a successful Paris Games and Kirpichnikova–who began representing France in 2023–was the lone female swimmer to add to France’s medal tally. Like Gose, Kirpichnikova is a distance swimmer, and she was involved in a close race with the German for much of the women’s 1500 freestyle final. Kirpichnikova pulled away from Gose and ended up winning silver with a French record 15:40.35.

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