Second World Cup gold – Wellbrock crowns the stressful days
Wellbrock leads open water relay to gold
Swimming star Florian Wellbrock won his first gold at the World Championships in Budapest on the third attempt. The Olympic champion led the open water relay with Lea Boy, Oliver Klemet and Leonie Beck as last swimmers to the title.
Within a very short time, Florian Wellbrock wins his second world championship gold at the swimming world championships in Budapest. After that he speaks of an almost perfect race. Now the German wants the treble.
AWhen he competed in the five-kilometer open water competition on Monday morning in Lupa Lake on the outskirts of the Hungarian capital Budapest, it was Florian Wellbrock’s third World Championship race in less than 40 hours at the Swimming World Championships. A mammoth program – but the 24-year-old frequent starter mastered it perfectly.
After bronze in the 1500 meter freestyle in the pool and gold in the 4×1.5 kilometer relay in open water together with Lea Boy, Oliver Klemet and Leonie Beck, the Magdeburg man secured another world title. Before the three races, he had already won silver in the 800-meter freestyle – on Monday Wellbrock prevailed over his long-time Italian competitor Gregorio Paltrinieri in the 26.7-degree warm Lupa Lake.
“Close to a perfect race”
Bronze went to Wellbrock’s training partner Mykhailo Romanchuk from Ukraine. Wellbrock struck after 52:48.8 minutes. His lead over Paltrinieri was 3.9 seconds.
“I think it was very close to a perfect race,” said Wellbrock: “I kept the speed at a very high level. That worked. Now it’s okay to be a bit tired.” On Tuesday he has a day off from competition. Wellbrock wants to defend his world title over the Olympic ten kilometers on Wednesday.
In the five-kilometer race, which the open-water Olympic champion has added to his program compared to the last World Championships, Wellbrock swam in front from the start. About halfway through, he was leading a five-man lead group. On the final lap he pulled away with Paltrinieri and won easily.
