World Championships: Florian Wellbrock Anchors German Open Water Relay to Gold, Completes Sweep With Fourth Gold
For the last six years, Florian Wellbrock has posted masterful results in both the pool and open water, navigating between the two very different formats more effectively than perhaps any other swimmer. Now, at age 27, Wellbrock has put together the finest week of his career with four gold medals in the open water races at the Singapore World Championships.
First came a 3.7-second win over longtime Italian rival Gregorio Paltrinieri in the 10k race. Two days later, Wellbrock beat Paltrinieri again in the 5k, and he added a win in the 3k knockout sprints, a new event at this year’s global meet. Finally, Wellbrock handled the anchor leg of Germany’s mixed 6k open water relay, holding off Paltrinieri’s Italian squad to secure the gold medal.
Germany was in sixth place after Celine Rieder swam the opening leg before Oliver Klemet moved the team into the second spot, two seconds adrift of France. Isabel Gose, another swimmer with strong credentials in pool competition, provided the decisive third leg by opening up a 9.2-second lead.
Challenges remained with Paltrinieri handling closing duties for Italy while David Betlehem, the silver medalist in the 3k knockout sprint race, was coming home hard for Hungary, but Wellbrock had enough left in the tank to hang on. He finished 19,500 meters of racing over five days with another gold, with the German team achieving a time of 1:09:13.3.
After completing the win, Wellbrock admitted he had not expected to emerge from the open water events with four gold medals.
“No, absolutely not. Yesterday I couldn’t sleep really well. I was also nervous heading into the relay today. I’m so proud of my team, we did a great job today. Four golds in four events is amazing,” Wellbrock said. “I was so scared at the end. I took a look and realized that it’s Greg behind me. I knew it was no time for jokes any more.”
Italy, with a team of Barbara Pozzobon, Ginevra Taddeucci, Marcello Guidi and Paltrinieri, secured silver in 1:09:15.4. Paltrinieri won his third silver medal of the week while Taddeucci was runnerup for a fourth time, having previously finished behind Australia’s Moesha Johnson in the 10k and 5k and behind Japan’s Ichika Kajimoto in the knockout race.
“It was really good,” Paltrinieri said. “It was really difficult, a lot of good teams today in the water, but we did our jobs. It’s good to be back on the podium with silver. We tried to take the gold, but for today, silver is good so we’re happy. We knew that four or five teams were battling for the medal so we were in contention but we didn’t know exactly how to do the race, how it was gonna be, so it’s still good to be on the podium.”
The Hungarian group of Bettina Fabian, Viktoria Mahalyvari-Farkas, Kristof Rasovszky and Betlehem grabbed bronze in 1:09:16.7. Rasovszky was the Olympic champion in the 10k last year, but amid a somewhat disappointing Worlds this year, this is his first trip to the podium.
“It’s so good to finish like this with my team. In this event, we’re not just fighting for ourselves, but for others as well. After all that’s happened this week, in the 10k and the 5k, I came here in the relay to put myself in and give all of myself for this race,” Rasovszky said. “It’s been a really tough week with this heat and in warmer waters. I didn’t really like it, but this is open water swimming and we have to adjust to any conditions we have.”
France just missed the medals with a fourth-place time of 1:09:24.7. Marc-Antoine Olivier, the 5k bronze medalist this week, swam the second leg, and he was joined by teammates Clemence Coccordano, Ines Delacroix and Logan Fontaine. Australia, with Johnson swimming third and men’s 10k bronze medalist Kyle Lee on the end, placed fifth in 1:09:53.3, followed by the neutral athletes from Russia (1:10:24.0) and the United States (1:10:27.2).
For Wellbrock, now 27, this four-gold-medal performance continues a run that began when he double-dipped at the 2019 World Championships, claiming the top spot in both the 10-kilometer race and the 1500-meter pool swim. Two years later, he won Olympic gold in the 10k and bronze in the 1500. His best results in years since have come in open water, but his consistent presence among the medalists in both competition formats has yielded a total of 14 World Championship medals, 10 of them gold, plus an additional three at the Short Course World Championships.
Also assembling a stacked medal record is Gose, 23. She captured Olympic bronze in the 1500 freestyle in Paris, and her strong 2024 also included three pool medals at the Doha World Championships in February and two more at the Short Course World Championships in December, including gold in the 1500 free. However, this is her first international medal in an open water event.
And with his silver medal, the 30-year-old Paltrinieri won his 19th medal at the World Aquatic Championships, a streak which dates back to his first gold in the 1500 free a decade ago. He has won seven world titles in his career, three in the 1500 free plus one each in the 800 free, 10k and open water relay. Adding in his medals at the Olympics and Short Course World Championships, Paltrinieri now has 30 total medals from global-level competitions.
