European Aquatics Athlete of the Year Awards 2025:  David Popovici voted best men’s swimmer

Romania’s David Popovici has been named best men’s swimmer in the 2025 European Aquatics Athlete of the Year Awards after holding off the challenge of 2024 winner Leon Marchand.

Popovici, who turned 21 on September 15 last year, secured 37.94% of the total vote after a year of success at U23 and senior level.

He edged the verdict over France’s quadruple Paris 2024 champion Leon Marchand, who earned a vote share of 31.52% after his own golden season which included a startling world record.

Popovici repeated his 2022 world double in the 100m and 200m freestyle, lowering his own European record in the former event to 46.51 – just 0.11 off the world record.

Earlier in the summer at the second European Aquatics U23 Championships in Samorin the 20-year-old had lowered the 100m freestyle European record to 46.71 en route to a 100/200m freestyle double.

Marchand made a huge impact on his return to racing at the World Aquatics Championships.

The 23-year-old Texas-based athlete excelled himself in the 200m individual medley semi-finals in Singapore, lowering the world record by 1.31 seconds as he clocked 1:52.69 to better the previous world record of 1:54.00 set in 2011 by Ryan Lochte of the United States.

Marchand, who won the 200m IM title in 1:53.68, the second fastest time ever recorded, then secured gold in the 400m medley in 4:04.73 – his seventh individual world title.

Thirty minutes later he recorded a 58.44 split for the breaststroke leg of the 4x100m medley final to help France secure silver in a national record of 3:27.96.

Marchand received the award for being the best male swimmer of the Championships. 

In what was a particularly rich year for male European swimmers, Hungary’s Hubert Kos took third place with a 16.57% vote share.

Kos had a season of high achievement as he added the world 200m backstroke title to his Olympic title in a European record of 1:53.19 and claimed bronze in the 200m individual medley.

There were also outstanding performances from the 24-year-old in short course racing.

Kos set world records in the 100m and 200m backstroke en route to winning the overall men’s World Aquatics Swimming World Cup title with a perfect record.

The first of the Hungarian’s world records came in the 200m backstroke on the first day of the Toronto World Cup as he clocked 1:45.12, lowering the 2015 mark of 1:45.63 set by Australia’s Mitch Larkin.

Two days later in Toronto he clocked a 100m backstroke time of 48.16 that eclipsed the mark of 48.33 set by Coleman Sweet of the United States in 2021.

Fourth place in this year’s award voting went to Germany’s Lukas Maertens, who won the world 400m freestyle title three months after becoming the first swimmer to go under 3:40.00 with a world record of 3:39.96.

 That took 0.11 off the mark his compatriot Paul Biedermann had set at the Rome World Championships in July 2009.

France’s 26-year-old Maxime Grousset, the fifth of the nominees, held off Switzerland’s Noe Ponti to win the men’s 50m and 100m butterfly world titles in Singapore, clocking a national record of 22.48 in the 50 and a European record of 49.62 in the 100.

He also helped France win 4x100m medley silver in a national record of 3:27.96 and mixed 4x100m freestyle in a national record of 3:21.35.

Grousset extended his season to take part in the European Aquatics Short Course Championships in Lublin, losing twice to Ponti before finding a way to beat him, by 0.01, in the 100m butterfly and adding a second title in the 100m freestyle.

Mike Rowbottom for European Aquatics

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