Leon Marchand, Florent Manaudou, Summer Mcintosh, and Ariarne Titmus were featured on Google Trends’ Year in Search, the search engine’s end-of-the year data synopsis.
In France, the home country to the year’s biggest sporting event, Leon Marchand topped the athletes list. The 22-year-old Toulouse native brought home four gold medals, launching him to superstar status in France and worldwide.
Coming in at #6 on the French list was sprint veteran Florent Manaudou. The 34-year-old has earned medals for France in the 50 free in each of the last four Olympic Games. He also anchored France to a bronze medal in the 400 medley relay (Marchand swam breaststroke on this relay as well).
France was the only country where a swimmer ranked #1, but Canada was the next closest. Eighteen-year-old phenom Summer McIntosh finished 2024 at #2 among athletes in her home country. She only ranked behind Algerian Olympic Champion boxer Imane Khelif. McIntosh brought home four Olympic medals and was the first Canadian to ever win three golds in one Games.
The year-end lists for Australia didn’t explicitly include a top athlete list. However, it did include an “Aussies” list, where world record holder Ariarne Titmus came in at #10. If you take just domestic athletes from this list, she ranked #6 with viral Olympic breakdancer Raygun holding the top spot. For the second Olympics in a row, Titmus came out on top of an uber-competitive 400 freestyle field. She also took gold in the 4×200 freestyle and claimed the world record in the 200 freestyle at Australia’s trials.
An analysis on Google Trends main page shows that worldwide, Marchand was the most searched swimmer of 2024. The GOAT Michael Phelps came in at #2, while Olympic legend Katie Ledecky ranked #3. See the side-by-side comparison of the three over time and country-by-country below. (blue = Marchand, red = Phelps, yellow = Ledecky).
The Olympic year boosted swimmers compared to last year. Marchand was the only swimmer to make lists in 2023, ranking #6 among athletes in France.
I wonder what people are googling Michael Phelps about. It’s great to see people are still interested in him.
Probably looking up his number of olympic medals, the same way people often google Usain Bolt to check his 100 free WR, or google the length of a blue whale
Outside of his foundation, the best things Phelps can do for swimming are continue broadcasting and continue participating in these ‘celebrity events’ like the golf match a month or two ago. I hope he stays far away from reality TV unlike Lochte