From Tokyo To Paris: Analyzing The Performances Of Repeat Individual Olympic Medalists

Every Olympic cycle, there are new talents that emerge from the bottom-up. At the 2024 Olympic Games, it was swimmers like Leon Marchand and Summer McIntosh — both swimmers didn’t reach the podium at the 2021 Olympic Games, but won their first international titles in 2022 and left Paris as the most decorated male and female swimmers respectively. But beyond single-Games glory are the swimmers who can medal and improve across multiple Olympics.

Medaling individually in back-to-back Olympic Games is a feat that is easier said than done. The proof is in the pudding — Caeleb Dressel and Emma McKeon, the two most decorated swimmers at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, left Paris without a single individual medal. Though both swimmers are at the tail-ends of their careers (with McKeon retiring recently), this stat simply goes to show how hard it is to maintain a high level across consecutive quads. Furthermore, improving from one quad to the next when one has already reached podium territory is even rarer.

In this article, we take a look at the trajectories of swimmers who medaled individually at both the Tokyo and Paris Olympic Games, analyzing just how extraordinary it is to both medal and improve in back-to-back Games.

Note: This article looks at pool swimming events only.

Men

On the men’s side, there were 11 repeat Olympic individual medalists out of the 33 individual Paris medalists and 32 Tokyo medalists. Out of those ten medalists, six were also medalists at the 2016 Olympic Games (Florent Manaudou, Kyle Chalmers, Ryan Murphy, Adam Peaty, Gregorio Paltrinieri, Wang Shun). Manaudou is the only one of the group that medaled individually across four Olympics — 2012, 2016, 2021, and 2024.

Out of those 10 medalists, only Nicolo Martinenghi (100 breast bronze in 2021, gold in 2024), Paltrinieri (1500 free fourth place in 2021, silver in 2024), and Kristof Milak (100 fly silver in 2021, gold in 2024) improved their placing in events that they medaled in during Tokyo or Paris. And only two swimmers, Finke and Paltrinieri, improved their times in events that they medalled in at either Games.

It’s no coincidence that the two three youngest repeat medalists (Finke, Martinenghi and Milak) both “improved” their level in some way between Tokyo and Paris. But the 30-year-old Paltrinieri’s improvements could be attributed to his general longevity, a bout of mono affecting his times during the Tokyo Games, and the men’s distance swimming field getting faster as a whole.

Finke, Paltrinieri, and Milak were the only male swimmers who defended their Olympic medalists across multiple events.

It’s fair to say that Finke made the biggest career leap out of all the men’s repeat individual medalists between Tokyo and Paris. Although he was a more decorated swimmer in Tokyo, he was a surprise double-victor in the distance events, racing in fields that produced considerably slower times than previous big meets. In Paris, he was 3.12 seconds faster than Tokyo in the 800 free and 9.28 seconds faster in the 1500. He also took down Sun Yang‘s 12-year-old world record in the 1500 free, a feat that nobody would have expected him to pull off in Tokyo.

List Of Individual Medalists At Both The Tokyo And Paris Olympic Games (Male):

Women

There were 11 repeat individual Olympic medalists on the women’s side, out of 25 different Paris individual medalists and 27 Tokyo medalists. Only three of those 11 medalled at the Rio Olympics as well (Sarah Sjostrom, Katie Ledecky and Kylie Masse), and Ledecky was the only one that medaled across four Olympics spanning from 2012 and 2024.

Less three-time medalists in the “repeat medalists” club compared to the men can probably be attributed to the average age of the women’s group (25.2) being two years less than the men’s group (27.5).

Sjostrom (50 free silver in 2021, gold in 2024; 100 free 5th place in 2021, gold in 2024), Regan Smith (100 back bronze in 2021, silver in 2024), Tatjana Smith (100 breast silver in 2021, gold in 2024) and Kate Douglass (200 IM bronze in 2021, silver in 2024) all improved their placing in an event they medaled in during Tokyo or Paris. Sjostrom, Ledecky, Kaylee McKeown, Regan Smith, Douglass, and Ariarne Titmus improved their times in a medaling event — with the former four doing so across multiple events.

As two of the older in the repeat medalist club, Sjostrom and Ledecky being two of the four swimmers to get faster across multiple events from Tokyo to Paris goes to show why they are two of the greatest to ever do it. In addition, it’s also worth nothing that Sjostrom suffered an elbow injury in early 2021 that could have hindered her Tokyo performance.

Out of all the repeat medalists, there were four swimmers (Smith, Douglass, McKeown, Zhang Yufei) who medaled in events that they didn’t race the finals of during Tokyo — something that didn’t happen on the men’s side. Nine of the 11 also defended their Olympic medalists across multiple events, with McKeown and Ledecky defending multiple gold medals.

The “most improved repeat medalist” distinction would have to go to Douglass, who became a whole different swimmer post-Tokyo. In 2021, she barely scraped by to podium in a historically weak 200 IM race. Three years later, she improved her time by over two seconds to take silver (in a time that would have won gold in 2021). She also won Paris gold in the 200 breast, an event she didn’t even swim at 2021 U.S. Olympic trials. To add on, the Tokyo version of Douglass was a relay non-factor, but she raced on two Team USA relays during Paris.

List Of Individual Medalists At Both The Tokyo And Paris Olympic Games (Female):

Conclusion

So what can we take from these results? For one, it proves that we said above — that it’s hard to defend an Olympic medal, and that it is hard to improve as a reigning Olympic medalist from one quad to another. Those who pulled off the latter were either still in the rising stages of their career, are an all-time great, or faced some sort of obstacle in Tokyo (like Paltrinieri and Sjostrom) that prevented them from reaching their full potential. Secondly, the disparity between male and female swimmers in the repeat medal club goes to show that while more of the 2016-era men are still competing at a high level, there are currently more female swimmers that are multi-medal threats.

Yes, the Olympics aren’t everything in terms of measuring a swimmer’s improvement between quads. For example, although Titmus’s individual times from Tokyo to Paris got slower in the 200 and 400 free, her personal best times got considerably faster compared to 2021. But looking at medal times across both Games is still a good way of gauging those who have maintained form throughout the years. And those who do are amongst the most impressive in the sport.