2019 FINA WORLD AQUATICS CHAMPIONSHIPS
- All sports: Friday, July 12 – Sunday, July 28, 2019
- Pool swimming: Sunday, July 21 – Sunday, July 28, 2019
- The Nambu University Municipal Aquatics Center, Gwangju, Korea
- Meet site
- FinaTV Live Stream
- Results
- Men’s 10Km
After the women had their shot at qualifying for the open water event in Tokyo 2020, the men had their turn in the 10 km race. It was a tight battle between Germany’s Florian Wellbrock and France’s Marc-Antoine Olivier during the finishing moments of the race.
In a photo finish, it was Wellbrock who held off Olivier by two-tenths of a second to win the race with a 1:47:56. Olivier, who was the Olympic and 2017 Worlds bronze medalist, improved to a silver medal behind Wellbrock.
This is Florian Wellbrock‘s first individual international open water medal, adding to his two medals in the pool (800 bronze/1500 gold) at the 2018 European Championships. At that same meet, Wellbrock swam the 25km, but did not finish the race. Wellbrock did receive a silver medal in the 5k team event.
Germany’s Rob Muffels earned himself a bronze medal in the race and will join countryman Wellbrock in Tokyo. Improving from his 5th place finish in 2017 was Hungarian Kristof Rasovszky, who bumped himself up to 4th place.
2017’s silver medalist American Jordan Wilimovsky finished in 5th place this time around, yet earned himself an Olympic berth almost a year before the US Olympic Trials in the pool in June 2020. Wilimovsky defeated Italian front-runner Gregorio Paltrinieri, who wound up in 6th place.
Defending world and Olympic champion Ferry Weertman of the Netherlands faded to 7th place, yet still has an opportunity to defend his Olympic title. Spain’s Alberto Martinez found himself in the top 8 as well.
Notching a second qualifier for their home nations are Mario Sanzullo of Italy and David Aubry of France, who rounded out the Olympic-qualifying top 10 men.
Note that swimmers who have qualified at this meet have blocked out their countrymen from qualifying for the Olympics. These countries cannot add a second Olympic qualifier that will be held in 2020 in Fukuoka, Japan. In Fukuoka, 15 spots will be awarded Olympic berths in Tokyo.
10 KM OPEN WATER RESULTS/2020 OLYMPIC QUALIFIERS
| Qualified | Country | Time/Time Behind | |
| 1 | Florian Wellbrock | Germany | 1:47:56 |
| 2 | Marc-Antoine Olivier | France | 0.20 |
| 3 | Rob Muffels | Germany | 1.50 |
| 4 | Kristof Rasovszky | Hungary | 3.60 |
| 5 | Jordan Wilimovsky | USA | 5.10 |
| 6 | Gregorio Paltrinieri | Italy | 5.10 |
| 7 | Ferry Weertman | Netherlands | 6.00 |
| 8 | Alberto Martinez | Spain | 6.30 |
| 9 | Mario Sanzullo | Italy | 8.80 |
| 10 | David Aubry | France | 9.20 |
Countries that have completed qualifying for the Olympics in the men’s 10km:
| COUNTRIES THAT HAVE 2 QUALIFIERS | |
| Germany | Florian Wellbrock/Rob Muffels |
| France | Marc-Antoine Olivier/David Aubry |
| Italy | Gregorio Paltrinieri/Mario Sanzullo |
| Countries that have 1 qualifier (and can have no more) | |
| Hungary | Kristof Rasovszky |
| USA | Jordan Wilimovsky |
| Netherlands | Ferry Weertman |
| Spain | Alberto Martinez |
Updated Open Water Medal Count:
| Country | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Total |
| Germany | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| France | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| China | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Hungary | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| USA | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Italy | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Canada | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
Wellbrock swam the mixed open water relay (4×1.25k) last year at the European Championships as well. Sarah Köhler also swam the relay and did not finish the 25k.
Germany took second in the team event, so Köhler and Wellbrock had to swim the 25k. Swimmers have to enter an individual open water event if they participate in the relay. However, there was no need to finish the event.
Thanks for the explanation.Did they just swim 100m and retire? Quite funny if so.
Rules are rules.
I thought the mixed event was 2 men and 1 woman swimming 5k each, in a pack, with the time of the third fastest swimmer on the squad as the team’s time…..
Not anymore
BTW Weertmann was in 53rd place 28.8 back from Wellbrock after 2.5km and then finished 5 seconds back. Did something happen at the start?
No, generally he is swimming it like this. If the front end had been slower through the race Weertman could win it. 6 seconds but doesn’t matter. Otherwise Wilimovsky and Paltrinieri finished with the same time just as e.g Weertman and Raso last year in Loch Lomond (Europeans).
Wellbrock looks the business. I think he will win the 1500 next week. I wouldn’t bet on him winning the OW next year though as it’s a lottery – the races are full of cheating as far as I’m concerned. It’s pretty clear that any time there is a big OW race several people are gonna pull legs and intentionally submerge someone (and more).
I’d kill for that shoulder to hip ratio. Dudes torso is an inverted triangle. Hopefully he (or anybody else) can take down that Sun Yang record in the pool next week.
We will see, although it would be kind of weird if Sun Yang would lose his only world record while his far less known countryman would keep his world record (in the 800 free) for a decade more or so. Wellbrock himself said a couple of months back that in his mind it will take a world record to win gold in 2020, so this for sure is one of his goals, but i don’t see him attacking it here. He improved his 400 free PB by 1.5 seconds this year and also improved his 800 free PB by about 2 seconds already, but at the same time his in-season best 1500 free time was a couple of seconds slower… Read more »
4 seconds of difference in an in-season 1500 doesn’t mean anything. It was his breakout year last year. Maybe he was just unsure of what he’s capable of and didn’t know how to control his time in an in-season meet. His 400 and 800 are currently better than Paltrinieri and he beat Paltrinieri in 10k. He has the speed and endurance, and I think he should be the one who have an edge right now.
Uh oh… He might be on for a WR in the 1500…
Why do you see this result as an indication? Just because he won the gold medal here doesn’t say much about his 1500 free speed. I think the guy from France he barely beat here couldn’t even break 15:00 in the 1500 free.
Not this year, but it won’t be safe in Tokyo.
As I know his best is 15:04.84.
US Distance Swimming is a joke. No medal contenders. Suspect coaching staff.
wilimovsky was the 2015 world champion and 2017 silver medalist at 10k. he also won pan pacs last year
Open Water Swimming is very dependent on lots and lots of real stress races unless you just have extremely fast 1500 speed and even then have to have decent meets to learn your capabilities with drafting, feeding and the like. You can’t just coach it or practice it in the pool. Unfortunately the America’s do not have the same number of high caliber 10k races for US or other North/South American swimmers to get experience, especially from an early age, versus Europe with easy travel to frequent major meets. Very expensive to get to international meets with a coach from the US unless you are already elite. How may club teams in US even have a coach to go on… Read more »
*whispers* the NCAA should have an OW water season like track/xc in order to be competitive
US open water swimming is basically a disaster with zero depth compared to pool events. There are no races to speak of other than Nationals, and no developmental program. Other than Jordan, the top 10 were all European racers who race early and often. Blame coaches, they generally don’t support it. Blame the NCAA system where all monies (scholarships and coaches) go towards sprinters (with that scoring system I would too), and blame USA Swimming with lack of attention to OW. In their minds it’s just 2 events (true) so why bother.
Wow. Really? At FINA’s Jr World Championship competition last year in Eilat, Israel, the USA Jr Open Water Team “won” the medal count and had two individual winners and the two relays earned silver medals. Team USA has depth, it’s just young depth. Three of the nine member USA Team in South Korea are under 20 years old. Yes the NCAA system focuses on sprinting, and USA Swimming does very little to promote Open Water competition, but to call US open water swimming a disaster is just wrong. A disaster would have been the US not qualifying anyone for Tokyo in Open Water. Did that happen? NO. Team USA qualified two women and one man for Tokyo Open Water. Hardly… Read more »
The us should reconsider its selection process for open water worlds. Jordan is consistent top of the pack in international races, however the second swimmer has a shotty history. US nationals is not an indicator of how an athlete will perform at the more competitive international races. How many of these other countries use their nationals as a selection for this meet? US nationals this year did not have many international swimmers and that lack of competition clearly showed here.
Didn’t Wilimovsky win medals at basically every important competition in the the last 3 or 4 years except for this one?
Some additional thoughts:
– Maybe the relative “weakness” of american open water swimming (on the men’s side) has something to do with the relative “weakness” of american long-distance freestyle swimming (on the men’s side)?
– I would say that for every non-american person it is kind of good to see that the US doesn’t dominate every swimming event, considering that they already dominate most pool events. This increases the diversity and that can only be good for the sport itself. I think some years ago many non-american fans kind of hoped that the US would become… Read more »
Don’t forget Haley
this comment is weak. it’s been a very fruitful weekend for US open water and the attitude there is spectacular…try to learn when to celebrate a victory even when it’s not a gold medal..have some patriotism even when we’re not at the very top but instead clearly on the up and up
He’s a huge danger in the 1500.
You are acting as if he was some kind of dark horse before this … i think basically everyone expects him to win a medal and normally this should be a 3-way battle between him, Paltrinieri and Romanchuk. Currently i would give the edge to Paltrinieri, although Romanchuk has the advantage of being fully rested.
Sorry for my poor English expression but I didn’t mean he’s an underdog in it. I just want to say his winning chance looks even bigger right now.
Paltrineri led most of the way but faded towards the end. He should gain more experience swimming open water and then he would be the man to beat in Tokyo.
Kudos to Wellbrock for a great tactic and a well deserved win.
Paltrineri appeared to take a feed on every lap including last which is rare for 6 lap races. He dropped quite a bit with that feed as no one else did.
At US ow nationals (6 weeks ago?) Paltrineri crushed Wilimovsky by over 1.5 mins (or something like that). Maybe Paltrineri was overconfident and thought he could run away with it, but this was a completely different, much stronger field, and Wilimovsky ended up beating him in the end. Also, I’m not sure that Paltrineri fed after the fifth lap. He actually got passed right after the field completed the fourth lap. In any case, i watched the race on TV and it was super entertaining.
Why would he be the man to beat, when Wellbrock is 3 years younger + has more experience in open water swiming and has basically the same speed at 800/1500 free and more speed at the 400 free? I guess i’ll take it anyways, since there were more than enough people who acted as if Rasovszky was the favorite before this race and we all know how it turned out …
Wellbrock was too chicken to race the 5k. A 1st and a 4th is a lot better than just a first.
Too chicken? Lol I really don’t know where you got this from but I’m sure Florian is a happy chicken considering he just won a gold medal and secured his Olympic berth one year out, and the pool competition hasn’t even started yet. The mile is what counts the most for him.
Are you serious? He has a chance for 3 golds in olympic events, why would he feel the need to race in a 4th non-olympic event, especially because that would decrease his chances in the other events? In addition to that if anything he would have been more dominant in the 5k, because this event is closer to the 1500 free than the 10k, so his speed would have been even more of an advantage. His main goal was to get the olympic ticket in the 10k, there was nothing to be won for him in the 5k. It would have been stupid to sacrifice his gold medal chances in 3 olympic events for a gold medal chance in a… Read more »
Yeah I am teasing you. You seem to hold him in very high regard. I think others can challenge but looking at the comment on the race they will need to form their own group to combat the tactics.
If the Open water was after the pool events, I think we would see more pool distance swimmers in more of the open water events (not ‘just’ the 10k).
After the women’s 10k race in the evening the two Germans and Raso based on friendship arranged to work together, swim as fast as they can from the begining in order to don’t race against your home nation swimmer and avoid to get out of the first 10 places. We could see that a world champion falled out there, nearly an olympic champion and some good swimmers, too. The most important is that they succeed in booking their tickets to Tokyo and yesterday the strongest won the race. So it was a good plan.
This information is from Rasovszky.
Good to hear. I already knew that Wellbrock and Rasovszky were friends. Wellbrock said before the world championships that they are often fooling around at the beginning of 10k’s, for example by diving under each other (don’t know if this is the correct expression) or by making whale noises.
Also interesting to know that Wellbrock and Muffels planned to work together. Muffels said that he tried to pull on Olivier’s leg shortly before the finish, so that Wellbrock could get away from him. Also apparently Olivier pushed Wellbrock down shortly before the finish line and german swimming thought about protesting to get Olivier disqualified (which would have meant gold and silver for Germany), but then they didn’t do it,… Read more »
Yes, good to know it. Another yes, Olivier tried everything, that was little more than normal open water swimming especially in the front that could be seen from anywhere. In that case Raso would have been 3rd 😉 and I should have been curious to see Lucas’s reaction, too.
Otherwise just before the finish somebody swam on Raso’s legs, too. The last some hundreds was a fight, I watched the race.
Muffels got a yellow card towards the end. I think that if he tried to interrupt Olivier at the finish then he would have gotten disqualified but usually the referees let them do whatever they want at the finish line without punishing them.
The age doesn’t mean anything. Lurz and Spyridon dominated open water when they were much older than both. Wellbrock swam a great race and is doing well in both open water and the pool but I still think that Paltrinieri just needs to gain the experience. I’m looking forward for the 1500 race between them, Romanchuk and others.