World Aquatics, the international governing body of all aquatics sports, has released its “athlete of the year” winners for all of its sports. Twelve athletes under nine different flags brought home the annual honors. Australia (3) and Spain (2) stood as the lone nations with winners across multiple sports.
World Aquatics Athletes Of The Year (Full Table)
| Sport | Male | Female |
| Swimming | Leon Marchand (FRA) | Summer McIntosh (CAN) |
| Open Water Swimming | Florian Wellbrock (GER) | Moesha Johnson (AUS) |
| Diving | Cassiel Rousseau (AUS) | Chen Yuxi (CHN) |
| Water Polo | Alvaro Granados (ESP) | Foteini Tricha (GRE) |
| Artistic Swimming | Aleksandr Maltsev (NAB) | Iris Tio Casas (ESP) |
| High Diving | James Lichtenstein (USA) | Rhiannan Iffland (AUS) |
Water Polo
Unsurprisingly, the winners in this sport came from the gold medalists at the 2025 World Championships tournament in Singapore. On the men’s side, Spain came out on top for a second time this decade, with Alvaro Granados winning WA’s annual award. He was named the MVP of the final match against country, scoring five of his home nation’s 15 goals. Further, Granados proved a star in Spain’s path towards winning the World Cup Division I tournament and the final prior to Singapore.
Greece’s Foteini Tricha notched the women’s award. The 20-year-old Athenian was instrumental in Greece’s first Worlds medal in 14 years and its gold medal win against Hungary. Tricha topped the overall tournament point standings, putting the ball in the net 25 times.
Diving
Chen Yuxi, a 19-year-old Chinese prodigy, walked away from 2025 as the world’s top female diver, adding three World Championship gold medals to her already-impressive collection.
In Singapore, Yuxi reigned queen of the 10m platform. The 19-year-old dominated the individual event, scoring a monster 430.50 in the final. This placed her 63.40 points ahead of the silver medalist.
In the synchro event, Yuxi pulled off an incredible four-peat with her new partner Zhang Minjie. In addition to the past four World gold medals in the event, Yuxi is also the two-time reigning Olympic Champion, making her undefeated at major competitions this decade.
Chen Yuxi’s third win came from the mixed 3m & 10m event. Yuxi and Chen Yiwen teamed up with top male Chinese springboard and platform divers, Chen Zilong and Cao Yuan, to put together a 466.25 win, 40 points over second place Mexico.
The top male diver hailed from down under: Cassiel Rousseau. A former acrobatic gymnast, the 24-year-old Aussie has found immense success on the platform, winning diving’s banner event at Worlds for a second time (the first time being in 2023). This year, he culminated a suspenseful final with a personal best score of 99.90 on his final dive for the crown, with a final score of 534.80. For good measure, he added a silver medal in the 3m synchro event with partner Maddison Keeney.
Artistic Swimming
Iris Tió Casas was rewarded by World Aquatics for her history-making year. The Spaniard cemented herself in the sport’s history by winning medals in all four of the sport’s disciplines in Singapore. She is the first athlete to do so at a World Championships.
Tio stood on the podium four times in the solo, duet, mixed duet, and team categories. Of those four podium appearances, three of them came with a gold medal around her neck.
Tio also scored gold in the Women’s Duet Free and Mixed Duet Free events. She and her partner Lilou Lluis had the highest artistic impression score as well as the highest overall score in the women’s competition. Then, she joined forces with trailblazer Dennis Gonzalez to score 323.86. They narrowly beat out Russian duo Aleksandr Maltsev and Olesia Platonova by .4.
While Tio made headlines on the women’s side, NAB (Russian) athlete Aleksandr Maltsev emerged as the top male artistic swimmer of the year. Maltsev, 30, competed in his first World Championships since 2019, and he walked away with three golds. He swept the two solo categories – technical and free – with decisive wins. In the mixed technical duet, he and his partner Mayya Gurbanberdieva struck gold. With the win, they shuttered a six-year-gap since their last world’s victory in the event together.
High Diving
James Lichtenstein, a Chicago native and Notre Dame alumnus, won his first world title and his first athlete of the year honor in the same year. The former trampoline gymnast found his way into high diving in his 20s and quickly rose through the ranks. In the 27m event at Worlds this summer, the now-30-year-old Lichtenstein made his first medal a gold one, scoring a 428.9
World Aquatics named Australian Rhiannan Iffland the top female high diver of the year. Unlike the relative newcomer Lichtenstein, 34-year-old Iffland is a bonafide legend in the sport. She pulled off a wire-to-wire win in the women’s 20m event to capture her 5th world title. She has won all but one of the World Championships since 2017 (only missing 2022).
(Open Water) Swimming
Summer McIntosh and Leon Marchand were named the top pool athletes, which you can read SwimSwam’s coverage about here.
In open water, Australia’s Moesha Johnson and Germany’s Florian Wellbrock were recognized for their banner years. You can read the full story about the 28-year-olds’ years in our Swammy awards, which can be found here for Johnson and here for Wellbrock.
Aussies did well.