World Championships: Florian Wellbrock Anchors German Open Water Relay to Gold, Completes Sweep With Fourth Gold
For the last six years, Florian Wellbrock has posted masterful results in both the pool and open water, navigating between the two very different formats more effectively than perhaps any other swimmer. Now, at age 27, Wellbrock has put together the finest week of his career with four gold medals in the open water races at the Singapore World Championships.
First came a 3.7-second win over longtime Italian rival Gregorio Paltrinieri in the 10k race. Two days later, Wellbrock beat Paltrinieri again in the 5k, and he added a win in the 3k knockout sprints, a new event at this year’s global meet. Finally, Wellbrock handled the anchor leg of Germany’s mixed 6k open water relay, holding off Paltrinieri’s Italian squad to secure the gold medal.
Germany was in sixth place after Celine Rieder swam the opening leg before Oliver Klemet moved the team into the second spot, two seconds adrift of France. Isabel Gose, another swimmer with strong credentials in both pool and open water, provided the decisive third leg by opening up a 9.2-second lead.
Challenges remained with Paltrinieri handling closing duties for Italy while David Betlehem, the silver medalist in the 3k knockout sprint race, was coming home hard for Hungary, but Wellbrock had enough left in the tank to hang on. He finished 19,500 meters of racing over five days with another gold, with the German team achieving a time of 1:09:13.3.
Italy, with a team of Barbara Pozzobon, Ginevra Taddeucci, Marcello Guidi and Paltrinieri, secured silver in 1:09:15.4. Paltrinieri won his third silver medal of the week while Taddeucci was runnerup for a fourth time, having previously finished behind Australia’s Moesha Johnson in the 10k and 5k and behind Japan’s Ichika Kajimoto in the knockout race.
The Hungarian group of Bettina Fabian, Viktoria Mahalyvari-Farkas, Kristof Rasovszky and Betlehem grabbed bronze in 1:09:16.7. Rasovszky was the Olympic champion in the 10k last year, but amid a somewhat disappointing Worlds this year, this is his first trip to the podium.
France just missed the medals with a fourth-place time of 1:09:24.7. Marc-Antoine Olivier, the 5k bronze medalist this week, swam the second leg, and he was joined by teammates Clemence Coccordano, Ines Delacroix and Logan Fontaine. Australia, with Johnson swimming third and men’s 10k bronze medalist Kyle Lee on the end, placed fifth in 1:09:53.3, followed by the neutral athletes from Russia (1:10:24.0) and the United States (1:10:27.2).
