The European All-Stars have beefed up their male breaststroke group with the addition of Germany’s Marco Koch to the lineup for the dual with the Americans in Glasgow, Scotland on December 20th and 21st, according to German swimming site SwimSportNews.
This is a huge boost for the European squad in races that looked like they might be a “push.” The 23-year old Koch has had a killer year of swimming, taking silver in the 200 breaststroke at both the 2012 European long course championships and the 2013 World Championships.
He’s also developed into a short course meters star, and carried his success into the fall. About three weeks ago, he was a 58.2 in the 100 and a 2:05.0 in the 200 at the International Swim Festival in Aachen in short course. He’s become one of the world’s best short course breaststrokers, and with no Daniel Gyurta, he may have been about the best the Europeans could have hoped for in the 200.
The men’s breaststrokes were the first race group we previewed for this meet, and at the time we called it a “push.” With Koch’s addition, however, alongside Michael Jamieson, Damir Dugonjic, and Andrew Willis, I’ll change that prediction to a slight edge for the Europeans.
Big news for Europe, he could make a key difference.
After Cordes’ perhaps somewhat disappointing showing in Barcelona, I’m really looking forward to seeing how he does in SCM and he will have some good quality opposition here, hopefully we’ll see some fast times.
Now if only the Europeans could pull someone out of the hat on the women’s side, where they look like they will get a kicking in the breaststroke events. After hearing how good Breeja Larson is in SCY I want to see her up against someone who can push her to see how good she is in SCM, but at the moment it looks like she could run away with it.