Matti Mattsson finally got an EC medal.
Matti Mattsson has now won a medal from the Olympics, the World Championships and the European Championships. AOP
One of Finland’s top swimmers Matti Mattsson swam to silver in the 200m breaststroke at the European Championships on Sunday in Rome.
Mattsson led the race, but eventually had to succumb to the British swimmer to James Wilby.
– It’s incredibly great that I got this medal and I’m happy that it finally came to my locker, Mattsson said after the race.
– The swimming was reasonably good. The last 15 meters started to rain a bit, but of course you have to be satisfied with the overall result.
In the end, Mattsson’s time was 2:09.40. Wilby took the gold medal by 0.46 seconds.
– Yes, it hurt for a while, but these are the competitions, they come and go. The World Championships was a bit of a nightmare for me, so I must be satisfied that I managed to get things done for these Games and I got a successful conclusion to the season.
When the swim was over and Mattsson looked at the scoreboard, positive things were on his mind.
– Of course, there was a positive feeling, but the loss of the gold medal gnawed a little, but I don’t know if it’s worth being terribly disappointed. There are probably 28 Olympic, World Championship and European Championship medalists in Finland, and our man is one of them. There are quite a few of them on Finnish soil, so I must be satisfied that I made it to that group.
According to Mattsson, the EC silver is not a disappointment.
– It was a successful bet in the finals.
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Mattsson was strong in his own semi-final swim on Saturday.
The Finn advanced to the final as the number one seed in the semi-finals and he led his own semi-final swim the entire time.
According to Mattsson, in the final, the last crunch was perhaps to some extent left in the barrel.
– But I don’t know if it would be any fresher if I tried again. Maybe I could have taken it a little more relaxed, but I was able to follow my own tactics quite well.
Mattsson already had Olympic bronze from Tokyo 2021 and World Championship bronze from Barcelona in 2013.
Now he finally won an EC medal as well.
– It feels incredibly great when there is also a medal in the trophy cabinet. It’s great to be rewarded for the amount of work we’ve put into this.
Mattsson says that he already had an extremely good feeling in his body on Sunday morning.
The gold medal is already a little bit in my eyes before swimming.
– But this is top sport and it just happens like this sometimes.
Mattsson lost the gold medal by 0.46 seconds. Elmeri Elo / All Over Press