Florian Wellbrock, Moesha Johnson crowned World Aquatics Open Water Swimmers of the Year
Florian Wellbrock and Moesha Johnson were named by World Aquatics as its Open Water Swimmers of the Year for 2025.
The choice for Wellbrock was a no-brainer after his clean sweep of titles at the World Aquatics Championships in Singapore. The German won the 10-kilometer race, the 5km and the 3km knockout sprints. He also was part of the German squad (Celine Rieder, Oliver Klemet, Isabel Gose) that won the 4×1500 relay. He is only the third man to win both the 5km and 10km races at the same World Championships.
The 28-year-old native of Bremen won Olympic gold in open water in Tokyo in 2021. He owns 17 career World Championships medals, with four of them coming in the long-course pool and 10 (including nine golds) in open water.
Johnson was nearly as good in the women’s competition. The Australian won the 5km and 10km races in Singapore, both times edging out Italian Ginevra Taddeucci. She became the first Australian woman to win a world title in the longer race.
Johnson tied for the bronze medal in the 3km knockout sprints, and her Aussie team finished fifth in the 4×1500 relay after medaling at each of the last two editions of Worlds.
“Australia is such a proud swimming nation,” Johnson said. “We’ve got this proud history that we talk about all the time. Kareena Lee’s bronze in Tokyo, that was the first time we were like, we can do this. I jumped over to open water after that, and the generation on the team now, we’ve come together as a passionate team and we want to put Australia on the map.”
The World titles were the first individual Worlds gold medals for the 28-year-old from New South Wales, who won silver at the Paris Olympics in the 10k. Johnson also won Open Water World Cup races over 10 kilometers in Soma Bay, Egypt, and Setubal, Portugal, as well as the 3km knockout sprint race in Golfo Aranci, Italy.
