From open water to the pool: Florian Wellbrock’s “mammoth task” in Doha is particularly challenging in the pool.
Photo: imago/Joel Marklund
Florian Wellbrock seems a little pensive when he thinks about his upcoming workload in the Persian Gulf. The 26-year-old usually does his training laps in the swimming pool during the first two months of winter. “But now,” he says in amazement, “suddenly there’s a World Championship on the program.” For the first time ever in an Olympic year, the swimming elite are now coming together at a World Championships.
Almost six months before the Summer Games in Paris, Qatar serves as a stage for top-class sport – which many top athletes turn their backs on because of the unusual date. The USA, the leading swimming nation alongside Australia, is only sending a skeleton team of 18 to Doha; At the World Championships last year there were 48 American swimmers at the start. Seven-time Olympic champion Katie Ledecky prefers counting tiles in the training pool. Just like her compatriot Caeleb Dressel, who returned home from the Tokyo Games with five gold plaques.
Some top stars from Down Under are also avoiding the title fights from the World Aquatics Association: Ariarne Titmus, Olympic champion in the 200 and 400 meter freestyle in Tokyo, is missing, as is Kyle Chalmers, defending champion in the 100 meter freestyle. The world record holder in this supreme discipline, the 19-year-old Romanian David Popovici, is also not in sight. Among the pool greats is 30-year-old Swede Sarah Sjöström, who won her first world title in Rome in 2009. British chest specialist and three-time Olympic champion Adam Peaty is making his World Cup comeback after a break due to mental problems.
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Florian Wellbrock leads the nine-person team from the German Swimming Association (DSV) with seven men and two women for the pool competitions. For now, he points to his strong training performances in the last few weeks. But the highlight of the season in the summer, the Olympic Games in Paris, also influences him. »My performance level is definitely not at the absolute top level. But he shouldn’t be that now, that’s what’s coming in Paris,” emphasizes Wellbrock, who experienced an extreme rollercoaster of emotions at last year’s World Championships in Fukuoka: First, the Bremen native crawled over five and ten kilometers in the open water with impressive dominance each gold. Only to then, after moving into the pool, end up stranded silently in the lead-up to the 800 and 1500 meter freestyle.
“He’s already carrying a bit of baggage from the last World Cup,” says national coach Bernd Berkhahn, who is also Wellbrock’s home trainer in Magdeburg. His model student, on the other hand, takes a very pragmatic approach to the malaise of the previous year: “The sporting nightmare in the pool in Fukuoka no longer plays a role at all,” emphasizes Wellbrock – and paints a very clear picture of it: “Purely from an emotional and psychological perspective,” he explains , “I’m very good at putting things in drawers and then allowing these drawers to remain in drawers.”
The resolute long-distance climber, who suspects that last year’s drop in performance was more physical than mental, opens his tough program again on Sunday in the old port of Doha with the Olympic ten kilometers. The day before, Leonie Beck from Würzburg started defending her title at the same place over the same distance.
Florian Wellbrock would also like to repeat his two open water triumphs in Fukuoka in Doha. The Tokyo Olympic open water champion describes this project as a “mammoth task” – and has previously thought out loud about the enormous significance of his gold plaque with the symbol of the five rings. »The Olympic victory made me a little prouder, but also easier. “It’s like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders,” he said in an interview with “nd”. And when asked whether the aspired and still open Olympic victory in the pool would be a comparatively small challenge for him after this experience, he replied in a relaxed manner: “You can pretty much put it in words.” That would be, he added, ” then just another Olympic title.”
But in order to be in a position to win Olympic gold in the pool, he first has to overcome the disaster in Fukuoka. In the second week of the World Championships, the pool competitions take place in Doha – and for Florian Wellbrock, after the mammoth task in open water, the special mission over 800 and 1500 meter freestyle begins. With Sven Schwarz from Hanover, he faces strong competition from his own team, although Wellbrock’s goal is clearly set: “Fourth place and being the best German – so that I can come home with two additional Olympic tickets.”
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