About

Florian Wellbrock’s improvement in the pool is mirrored with his concurrent improvement in speed and savvy strategy in the open water. In the 1500m in the pool, the 22-year-old German has improved from 32nd at the 2016 Rio Olympics in 15:23.88 to a gold medal at the 2019 FINA World Championships in 14:36.54. The massive increase in pool swimming speed and stamina has boosted his standing in the open water world. In the 10 km open water races, he has spectacularly vaulted from rarely competing on the FINA/HOSA Marathon Swim World Series between 2016 and 2019 to winning the most pressure-packed 10 km race at the 2019 FINA World Championships. He pulled off the rare Mellouli Double, but he did it in an unprecedented manner: two distance races = two gold medals. For initially winning the 10 km race by 0.2 seconds and then winning the 1500m freestyle by 1.09 seconds 12 days later at the FINA World Championships, for pulling off the rarest Mellouli Double of all time, and for qualifying first and becoming the biggest dual pre-Olympic favorite in both the Olympic 10 km Marathon Swim and the 1500m freestyle at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.