Swimming at the 2004 Summer Olympics

The Olympic Aquatic Centre in Athens was opened in time to host the 1991 Mediterranean Games. A roof was planned to be built as part of the refurbishments for the Olympic Games but a series of delays meant that this idea had to be abandoned.

Like the 2000 Olympic Games the swimming events were dominated by the United States and Australia who won 19 of the 32 Olympic titles. Their combined efforts yielded 43 medals in all.

The men’s competition itself turned into a cross-generational clash between the stars of the 2000 Olympics such as Ian Thorpe and Pieter van den Hoogenband and those who were on the way to establishing themselves as the leaders of the next generation such as Kosuke Kitajima, Aaron Peirsol and especially Michael Phelps. Phelps was the most successful swimmer of the Games although his feat of winning 6 golds would seem tame in comparison to his performance at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. The spoils in the women’s events were more evenly divided than the men’s races and only medley specialist Yana Klochkova of Ukraine won more than one individual gold medal.