Olympic champion Florian Wellbrock surprisingly failed in the preliminary heat at the swimming world championships in Japan in the race over 800 meters freestyle. The 25-year-old shot in 7:45.87 minutes in Fukuoka on Tuesday and finished ninth. Wellbrock was seven hundredths of a second behind in eighth place, which would have been enough for the finale. He was actually considered a medal candidate on the second-longest pelvic distance. Last year he finished second at the World Championships in Budapest. In the open water, the native of Bremen had won gold twice in the first week of the World Championships. He is an Olympic champion over ten kilometers.
“I can’t explain that,” said long-distance national coach Bernd Berkhahn. “He was recovered, everything relaxed, no problem. And then he doesn’t really get into his rhythm and in the end there is a time that is seven hundredths too slow.” Berkhahn added: “We have to deal with that first.” Wellbrock himself did not comment on his retirement.
The medal hopes of the German swimmers in the final on Wednesday are now carried solely by Lukas Märtens. Wellbrock’s Magdeburg teammate took third place in the heats in 7:42.04 minutes. The Australian Samuel Short secured the victory.
Breaststroker Lucas Matzerath qualified for the semi-finals over 50 meters in seventh place in the heats in 26.94 seconds. In the evening session (from 1 p.m. CEST) freestyle specialist Isabel Gose wants to fight for the medals over 1500 meters.
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The cliff diver Iris Schmidbauer is already far behind at halftime. The European Champion received 92.00 points for her first two jumps in the Momochi Seaside Park from a height of 20 meters and ended up in 17th place. After a completely botched second round before the decision on Wednesday (5:00 a.m. CEST), the gap to a medal position is already 58.50 points. The Upper Bavarian, who trains in Dresden, won the first official title in a swimming championship in Rome last year. Cliff jumping has been part of the World Cup program since 2013. It is officially known as High Diving, as it is used to jump from a steel structure and not from cliffs as in the early days.