24 women and 32 men lined up on the starting pontoons that spanned the Seine at the 2024 Olympic 10K open water swims. Both races were filled with tactical changes in a dramatic setting that crowned Sharon van Rouwendaal of the Netherlands and Kristóf Rasovszky of Hungary as the Olympic champions.
It was the second time in Olympic history that the Seine was the scene of the crowning of Olympic champions – 124 years apart.
The history of open water swimming at the Olympics dates back to the first modern Olympic Games:
- 1896 Athens Olympics: Bay of Zea off the Piraeus coast in the Aegean Sea in Greece
- 1900 Paris Olympics: Seine River in Paris, France
- 1904 St. Louis Olympics: Life Saving Exhibition Lake, a man-made pond near Skinker and Wydown Boulevards in St. Louis, Missouri in the USA
- 1906 Athens Intercalated Games: Neo Phaliron Bay off the coast of Athens, Greece
- 2008 Beijing Olympics: Shunyi Olympic Rowing-Canoeing Park, 60 km outside Beijing, China
- 2012 London Olympics: Serpentine in central London, England
- 2016 Rio Olympics: Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- 2020 Tokyo Olympics: Odaiba Marine Park in Tokyo Bay, Japan
- 2024 Paris Olympics: Pont Alexandre III on the Seine in Paris, France
- 2028 Los Angeles Olympics: within the Long Beach Breakwater along Belmont Shores near the Belmont Veterans Memorial Pier in Long Beach, California, USA
- 2032 Brisbane Olympic Games: Southport Broadwater Parklands in Gold Coast City, Queensland, Australia
The Swim Scribe (@TheSwimScribe) explains the first Olympic races in 1896:
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