At some point Florian Wellbrock withdrew into the shade, behind the advertising displays, just away from the glaring light and the burning sun. Early on, after getting out of the water, he had put a white towel over his head and now looked a bit like a Bedouin who has just arrived at the waterhole and is trying to replenish his energy stores. The loss of fluids is immense when swimming, especially in open water, on the hard ten-kilometer route. Leonie Beck came along, hugged the 25-year-old warmly, she had shown Wellbrock on Saturday how the world championship title can be won over this route in this Japanese metropolis of Fukuoka.
But Wellbrock, the now five-time world champion, had made his own plan. Unlike Beck 24 hours earlier, he didn’t wait long in midfield to conserve strength and then break out of the leading group at the very end. No, he made the race fast from the start, pulling the group of 69 swimmers apart, setting the pace by just giving the rabbit, like in track and field. Or, perhaps a more apt image: a Jacobita dolphin, which is known to enjoy swimming in front of the bow waves of ships.
In the end Wellbrock had dominated the competition in an impressive race, almost outclassed. He finished at Momochi Seaside Park in 1:50:40.3, nearly 19 seconds ahead of second-placed Hungary’s Kristof Rasovszky. Almost a little forgotten was that Wellbrock’s 21-year-old training colleague Oliver Klemet won bronze, just 1.8 seconds behind Rasovsky. For Klemet, who already has an open water title with the mixed relay in his books from last year in Budapest, it was the first World Championships individual medal.
A drinking break that is not a break: Wellbrock is already looking for the bottle fishing rod intended for him.
(Photo: Jo Kleindl/dpa)
But what about Gregorio Paltrinieri, Wellbrock’s eternal competitor from Italy, in whose group Leonie Beck also trains in Italy? After he had duped Wellbrock in Budapest, he was only fifth this time, more than 40 seconds behind his compatriot Domenico Acarenza. They all had no chance against this dolphin from Germany. “A terrific result and a great start to this world championship,” said Wellbrock, the dolphin, later, and admitted: “I toyed with the fact that we’d get two medals today.”
It almost seemed as if the two were even a little annoyed that the Hungarian had pushed himself between them. On the other hand, the sports director of the German Swimming Association (DSV), Christian Hansmann, also illustrated the value of this golden opening weekend for the Germans: “Indescribable, the two have never left any doubt that someone else is on the podium here. And we have achieved three out of four personal quota places for the Olympics.” 2024 in Paris Wellbrock, Klemet and Beck are now seeded, a starting place for women would still be free. For the trio, this means that they no longer have to make a detour to qualify via the World Cup in Doha in February, which is unfavorably located in the middle of the preparation cycle. How important this early qualification is for the DSV swimmers was made clear by Klemet, who frankly admitted that it was more important to him than bronze at the World Championships.
The Magdeburg training group around Wellbrock, Klemet and Lukas Märtens, in which the Ukrainian Mykhailo Romantschuk also swims, is the key to this success for the men. National coach Bernd Berkhahn prepared them meticulously for the World Cup during acclimatization in Kumamoto and in June at the high-altitude training camp in the Sierra Nevada. “The high-altitude training camp was very good, not just for me, but for the entire team,” Wellbrock told SZ before the start of the world championships, even if his wife Sarah, who is not in Fukuoka after retiring from competitive sports, is there , missed: “I noticed again and again in the training camp that the time without her is emotionally a bit difficult, that was a small challenge.”
Winners among themselves: silver winner Kristof Rasovszky, world champion Florian Wellbrock and bronze winner Oliver Klemet.
(Photo: Iiiiei Kato/Reuters)
Born in Bremen, he still seems to be able to cope well with this distance in Japan – and also with the hot and humid conditions, which Wellbrock appreciates more than cold on land and in the water. He knew that the wind would pick up at the end of the race. “I don’t get away so well in this choppy water. So I wanted to swim in front and set the pace to thin out the group. I didn’t want us to end the final sprint with eight men in the last 200 meters.” The water quality discussed in the previous days as a result of heavy rain and flooding was no longer an issue in Sunday’s race.
Wellbrock and Co will continue on Tuesday, over the five kilometers in open water he is again one of the top favorites as the defending champion. Wellbrock left it open whether he would then compete in the season. In the second week of the World Championships he then starts over 800 and 1500 meters freestyle, on the long distance no one was faster than him this year. The prospects remain: muggy hot and quite medal-worthy.