Olympic champion Florian Wellbrock also made a false start in the pool after the disappointing open water races at the World Championships in Qatar.
As in the title fights in Fukuoka, the 26-year-old missed the final of the 800 m freestyle. The man from Magdeburg finished tenth on Tuesday in 7:48.17 minutes and thus once again missed the chance to secure his ticket to the Summer Games in Paris early.
“Surprisingly slow,” Wellbrock said after his race, looking at the time, before his exit was sealed a little later: “There might have been a little bit left in it, but it felt faster than it actually was.”
Black in the final
Sven Schwarz (Hannover), however, was “very satisfied” with his performance. The 22-year-old reached the final on Wednesday (5:02 p.m. CET) in third place overall in 7:46.95 minutes.
“You always flirt with qualifying for the Olympics, i.e. fourth place,” said Schwarz. Anything “upwards would be great, that would really be a dream for me that I would fulfill. But you can never say that, it was a very dense, narrow field.”
Wellbrock’s low continues
At the World Championships in Japan in the summer, Wellbrock completely surprisingly failed in the heats of the 800 and 1500 m freestyle. In Doha, at the beginning of the competition, he had already lost his open water titles over the five and ten kilometers and clearly missed the podium in ninth and 29th place. On Saturday Wellbrock still has the 1500 m freestyle.
In the 50 m breaststroke, Melvin Imoudu from Potsdam came in sixth in 26.91 seconds and Lucas Matzerath (Frankfurt) in 13th (27.40 seconds) and made it to the semi-finals in the afternoon (5:34 p.m. CET).