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Florian Wellbrock at the start in Budapest
Photo: Tamas Kovacs/EPA
Florian Wellbrock won the silver medal at the swimming world championships and brought the German team their third medal in Budapest.
The 24-year-old swam the 800-meter freestyle in 7:39.63 minutes on Tuesday – a German swimmer has never been so fast over this distance.
Wellbrock only had to admit defeat to the victorious Bobby Finke from the USA.
Bronze went to Mikhailo Romanchuk of Ukraine.
The last three World Cup podiums for the German pool team were in 2015, when freestyle ace Paul Biedermann was still active.
For exceptional swimmer Wellbrock it was the first medal at the Olympic Games or World Championships on this route.
Born in Bremen, who trains with national coach Bernd Berkhahn in Magdeburg, he surprisingly lost the 800-meter run at the last World Cup in South Korea.
At the Tokyo Olympics, he finished fourth.
A place on the podium was his "aspiration," Wellbrock had formulated as a goal this time.
He qualified for the final as the second fastest.
27 hundredths of a second were missing
In the final, Romanchuk took the lead after about the middle of the race.
Wellbrock, Gregorio Paltrinieri and Finke formed the chasing trio.
In the final sprint, Finke was the strongest, as in his Olympic victory last summer, but Wellbrock also swam well.
"At first I was a bit annoyed that I lost gold," said Wellbrock, who ended up missing Finke by just 27 hundredths of a second.
“But I'm very happy with the German record.
The 800 has never worked as well as it does today.«
Wellbrock has a special relationship with bronze winner Romantschuk.
The two are not only colleagues and competitors, but also friends.
After consultation with Berkhahn, Wellbrock included the Ukrainian in his training group because of the war in his home country.
"If a German team hadn't invited me, I wouldn't be here," Romantschuk said in Budapest.
After gold over 1500 meters in the pool and ten kilometers in the open water in 2019, Wellbrock was able to celebrate his third medal at the long track world championships.
For the open water Olympic champion, the medal should only be the beginning in Hungary.
Wellbrock wants to defend his title and swim in the second half of the World Championships in Lupa Lake over five kilometers and with the relay for the podium.
ngo/dpa/sid