Races, rivalries and records – who to watch at Paris Olympic swimming pool

Swimming is one of the most watched events at the Olympic Games with the speed and stamina of the athletes, and the close racing, forming a thrilling spectacle for the audience.
There are 35 events on the Olympic swimming schedule at Paris 2024.
According to World Aquatics, 854 athletes – 463 male and 391 female – from 187 countries, the Individual Neutral Athletes and the IOC (International Olympic Committee) Refugee Olympic Team, will compete in the swimming events at the games.
Each participating nation at the Summer Games will have a chance to send at least two athletes to Paris and five – Dominica, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and Vanuatu – will make their Olympic swimming debuts.

The Paris La Defense Arena, a modular multipurpose venue in Nanterre, a northern suburb of Paris, will host the swimming and water polo competitions.
The Aquatics Centre, situated in Seine Saint Denis in central Paris, will welcome the world’s greatest athletes for the artistic swimming and diving events. The Aquatics Centre, along with Le Bourget Climbing Wall, is the only permanent sports facility to be built for the Paris 2024 Games.
The 10 km marathon swimming and triathlon swim-leg events will be held in the River Seine, in central Paris, on August 8-9.
In the leadup to the Olympics, there has been ongoing controversy surrounding the staging of these two competitions in a river which, until recently, was not recommended by local authorities as a waterway suitable for human bathing. Read more
In addition to a mixed 4x100m medley relay, the world’s top swimmers will be vying for medals in these men’s and women’s categories:
The United States has been leading the swimming medal tally for the past six Olympic Games, with Australia often finishing second.
China and Great Britain have been top five finishers at recent games, while some other European nations, including France and the Netherlands, have increasingly been winning medals.
This year’s favourites will be:

The US and Australia lead the way with 46 and 41 swimmers in their Olympic squads.
Italy has named 36 athletes for the pool swimming competitions, with China (31) and Great Britain (30) not far behind.
Here are Al Jazeera’s picks for the men’s and women’s swimmers set to rule the pool at the Games:
The pool swimming competitions will get under way on July 27 with several men’s and women’s events.
The first medals will be handed out in the evening for the men’s and women’s 400m freestyle as well as both the 4x100m freestyle relay competitions.
The last swimming finals will be held on August 4, with the women’s 50m freestyle, men’s 1,500m freestyle, as well as the men’s and women’s 4x100m medal relay finals.
Men’s 100m freestyle – One of the premier events at the Olympics, the men’s 100m freestyle promises to be an epic contest between Chinese world record holder Pan Zhanle, teenage sprint phenom and former world record holder David Popovici of Romania, and Australia’s 2016 Olympics gold medal winner Kyle Chalmers.
The men’s 100m freestyle will be held at 10:20pm local time (1920 GMT) on Wednesday July 31.
Women’s 400m freestyle – This event has been billed by the media as the ‘race of the century’ and features three superstars of the swimming world: Katie Ledecky, Ariarne Titmus and Summer McIntosh.
The women’s 400m freestyle final will be held at 8:50pm local time (1850 GMT) on Saturday 27 July. Read more about this incredible three-way rivalry in the pool.
You can follow the action on Al Jazeera’s dedicated Paris 2024 Olympics tournament page with all the news and features, as well as event build-up and live text commentary on selected football, basketball, tennis and boxing fixtures.