The Germans have finalized a 38 swimmer roster (27 in the pool, and 11 in open water) for the 2014 European Championships, which will begin on August 13th. This is a major event for the Germans, because not only is it the most significant of the four European Championship meets held every quadrennial, but because this year’s meet is being hosted in Berlin.
At the last equivalent version of this meet, in 2010, across the four sponsored disciplines, the Germans won 20 total medals (8 gold, 9 silver, and 3 bronze). That left them with the 3rd most medals, and second by the gold-silver-bronze ranking methodology, behind only Russia.
In pool swimming specifically, they took 9 (2 gold, 5 silver, and 2 bronze), plus another gold, silver, and bronze in open water.
This year, with home turf (which arguably matters more in open water swimming than pool swimming), the open water team especially will hope to outdo that performance with stars like Angela Maurer, Thomas Lurz, Christian Reichert, and Isabelle Haerle.
In the pool, this will be the German women’s first big meet without Britta Steffen. That means that there biggest hope for a medal will be her sprinting counterpart Dorothea Brandt, especially with Ranomi Kromowidjojo out of the meet.
For the men, Marco Koch, the lone German pool swimming medalist at last year’s World Championships, will be a big contender in the 200 breaststroke. His biggest challenger it seems now will be whether or not any of the British swimmers who have been incredible at the Commonwealth Games will even race Euros, and where they’ll be when they get there. Britain pushed its top swimmers to commit to one or the other.
Steffen Deibler should also medal in the two shorter butterfly events, and a handful of other German breaststrokers might wind up on the podium as well.
The full rosters for men and women are below:
Women
Leonie Antonia Beck
Dorothea Brandt
Annika Bruhn
Lisa Graf
Vanessa Grimberg
Isabelle Härle
Franziska Hentke
Sarah Köhler
Angela Maurer
Jenny Mensing
Sonnele Öztürk
Caroline Ruhnau
Patricia-Lucia Wartenberg
Alexandra Wenk
Finnia Wunram
Svenja Zihsler.
Men
Robin Backhaus
Paul Biedermann
Steffen Deibler
Markus Deibler
Christian Diener
Hendrik Feldwehr
Jan-Philip Glania
Nicolas Graesser
Jacob Heidtmann
Philip Heintz
Marco Koch
Yannick Lebherz
Thomas Lurz
Sören Meißner
Rob Muffels
Clemens Rapp
Christian Reichert
Alexander Studzinski
Florian Vogel
Andreas Waschburger.
Great photo!!