A good hour after the start, the cloud that had been clinging to the skyscrapers over the Ariake district since early morning began to move. The light became glistening, the air became sticky. It was only half past seven in the morning, but more and more coaches and supervisors were now crowding under the few umbrellas or in the shadows of the buildings, and the first journalists thought that such an Olympic ten-kilometer open water race could also be held in an air-conditioned press tent on the screens instead of under the hostile Japanese sun.
That was roughly the moment when Leonie Beck, 24, from Würzburg began to enjoy the race.
At 6:30 a.m., 25 women jumped into the water between the artificially created islands in Tokyo Bay, the official framework conditions had been determined an hour beforehand: 27 degrees air temperature, 87 percent humidity, 29.3 degrees water temperature. But then the cloud was still there, later it got hotter and hotter, and if you had measured again at 8:30 a.m. when the Brazilian Ana Marcela Cunha, 29, was the first to hit the board in the target arc, the maximum permitted water temperature would be 31 degrees may have been exceeded. “Everyone reported that it was really getting warmer and warmer,” said the German team boss Bernd Berkhahn, “that was the limiting factor today.” The sweat on Berkhahn’s face stood under his peaked cap.
But no swimmer was apparently as indifferent to the heat as Leonie Beck, who finished fifth. She stood in the sun with the journalists and laughed. And? Was it bad? She was asked. “Not at all,” she replied. “I actually didn’t sweat at all.”
In the bay the big splash, in the background the Rainbow Bridge: The scenery during the Olympic open water swimming is beautiful – only the participants should not have a view of the backdrop.
(Photo: Leonhard Foeger / Reuters)
There is something meditative about swimming in open water, at least when you watch from the shore. You almost get the impression that time stands still. A big splash can be seen somewhere in the bay. Lifeguards paddle around on their boards. Support boats move slowly through the scenery. In the background, the trucks glide through the sky, supported by Tokyo’s famous Rainbow Bridge, the subway trains rumble one floor down over to downtown Tokyo. In the north the skyline, in the west the cranes of the container port. Look back into the harbor basin. It splatters. Now a little further to the left. So the minutes and hours go by.
If you have to swim yourself, swimming in open water is brutal – punches, kicks, plus the lactate that makes the muscles burn – and it can still be the most beautiful. “Oh,” sighed Leonie Beck in any case, “that was really fun. Yes! Really! Really! It might sound stupid, but that was such a cool race! The best open water race of my career. And with fifth place I can really do it.” be proud.”
You can’t really simulate ten kilometers in 30 degrees warm water
Olympia is more than the eternal question of gold, silver or bronze. Olympia, that’s four (this time: five) years of preparation – and then one moment. In preparation, they “took extra heat baths before training,” reported Berkhahn, in order to prepare the athletes for the temperatures. But you can’t really simulate ten kilometers in 30 degrees warm water.
Finnia Wunram, 25, from Magdeburg, the second German starter on Wednesday, looked pretty exhausted afterwards. Wunram has already won bronze over five and silver over 25 kilometers at world championships, and now she too had kept up in the leading group for a long time. Then at some point the strengths were no longer sufficient. “The conditions were tough today,” she said.
Athlete feeding: after each lap it goes past the refreshment station.
(Photo: Oli Scarff / AFP)
Leonie Beck took the lead right from the start. She felt good, she avoided the scuffles. And at the beginning of the last of seven laps, she thought “that I should try something now” – and picked up the pace. That maybe it was too early? That you might have lacked the strength for a medal in the final sprint? The coach Berkhahn was torn back and forth, “you have to be patient and watch the right moment,” he said on the one hand. On the other hand: “You can also finish fifth in the final sprint, and then you reproach yourself for not risking anything”. And what could be nicer than “setting accents at the Olympics, even helping to determine the course of the race, that’s fun!”
Leonie Antonia Beck after swimming.
(Photo: Oliver Weiken / dpa)
No one can take that from Beck now. The last lap: Once again it was about the inflated giant buoys. On the aerial photos you can see the skyline of Tokyo, the bridge, down in the water you can see it splashing, and the TV people have put a digital German flag on the foremost swimmer, with the words: “Leader: L. Beck”. Sent out all over the world.
Nine o’clock in the morning in Tokyo, the air flickers on the horizon, the cicadas are chirping, the photographers drag their cameras and lenses to the bus, panting. Leonie Beck stands in the sun and thinks back to the past hours. She says: “Actually during the whole race I didn’t have a single negative thought.”
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