Danish swimmer Martine Damborg has been named the Breakthrough Athlete of the Year by the Danish Sports Confederation, Team Denmark, and Politiken. The award is Denmark’s oldest sporting honor, dating back to 1929, and Damborg is the 11th swimmer to receive the award.
Damborg, 18, earned her first major senior achievements in 2025, but her historic year began in the junior ranks. She won the 50 free and 100 fly at the European Junior Championships and took silvers in the 50 back and 50 fly.
Along with four medals in 2024 and 2023 each, she is now the most-decorated Danish swimmer in the history of those championships at nine total individual medals.
She also won a bronze medal in the 50 fly at the World Junior Swimming Championships, making her the first Dane to ever medal at that meet.
She then made her senior international debut at the European Short Course Championships, earning gold medals in the 50 and 100 meter butterflies.
“Martine’s success is very much due to her process-oriented approach to her career. She is hardworking and focused—not on the next big result, but on reaching her full potential and becoming the best swimmer she can be,” said Thomas Stub, national team director for Swim Denmark.
Her 24.61 in the 50 fly makes her the 11th-fastest swimmer ever in that event, and she set European Junior Records in the 50 fly in both long course and short course meters.
Damborg, who trains with KVIK Kastrup, marks a hope for Danish swimming to return among the world’s elite swimming nations. Her European Short Course gold medals are the country’s first since 2013 in Herning, when Denmark hosted in the midst of a golden generation of women’s swimming in the early 2010s (Mie Nielsen, Rikke Moeller Pedersen, Jeanette Ottesen, Pernille Blume).
Past Aquatic Sports Honorees:
- Ingrid Larsen (1931) – Diver
- Ragnhild Hveger (1935)
- Inge Sørensen (1936)
- Jytte Hansen (1948)
- Bjarne Kragh (1980)
- Benny Nielsen (1986)
- Mette Jacobsen (1988)
- Berit Puggaard (1989)
- Louise Ørnstedt (1998)
- Rikke Møller Pedersen (2009)
- Mie Ø. Nielsen (2011)
- Martine Damborg (2025)
