2025 SWIM OPEN STOCKHOLM
- Saturday, April 12th – Tuesday, April 15th
- Stockholm, Sweden
- LCM (50m)
- SwimSwam Preview
- Day 1 Recap/Day 2 Recap/Day 3 Recap
- Entries/Live Results
The 2025 Swim Open Stockholm concluded tonight with Germany’s Lukas Märtens following up his astounding 400m freestyle World Record with another huge swim, this time in the 800m free.
23-year-old Märtens blasted a winning effort of 7:39.10 to beat the field by 2 seconds en route to registering a new lifetime best and lowering his own former national benchmark.
His teammate and 1500m freestyle victor here Florian Wellbrock snagged the silver medal in 7:41.10 while Oliver Klemet made it a German sweep with a time of 7:44.92 for bronze.
Entering this competition, Märtens’ career-swiftest performance checked in at the 7:39.48 produced for bronze at the 2023 World Championships.
Although he was just .38 ahead of that previous result, the man negative-split his race by a large amount this time around.
Märtens opened in 3:51.07 on the front half but sped his way to 3:48.03 on the back 400m, nearly 3 seconds faster.
Splits by 200:
- 1:53.42
- 1:57.65
- 1:55.91
- 1:52.12 (!!!!!)
Of note, China’s Zhang Lin also negatively split his race when setting the longstanding World Record of 7:32.12 in 2009 – 3:46.79/3:45.33 – including an other-worldly final 200m of 1:51.76.
Märtens bumped himself up to now rank as the 9th-best performer in history.
Top 10 Men’s LCM 800 Freestyle Performers All-Time
- Zhang Lin (CHN) – 7:32.12, 2009
- Ous Mellouli (TUN) – 7:35.27, 2009
- Ahmed Hafnaoui (TUN) – 7:37.00, 2023
- Sam Short (AUS) – 7:37.76, 2023
- Daniel Wiffen (IRL) – 7:38.19, 2024
- Sun Yang (CHN) – 7:38.57, 2011
- Grant Hackett (AUS) – 7:38.65, 2005
- Bobby Finke (USA) – 7:38.67, 2023
- Lukas Märtens (GER) – 7:39.10, 2025
- Ian Thorpe (AUS) – 7:39.16, 2001
He also now dethrones Irish Olympic champion Daniel Wiffen to rank #1 in the world this season and the only swimmer on the planet to have a sub-7:40 time thus far.
2024-2025 LCM Men 800 Free
Schwarz
ER 7:38.12
| 2 | Lukas MÄRTENS | GER | 7:39.10 | 04/15 |
| 3 | Florian WELLBROCK | GER | 7:41.10 | 04/15 |
| 4 | Daniel Wiffen | IRL | 7:41.52 | 04/13 |
| 5 | Oliver KLEMET | GER | 7:44.61 | 05/02 |
| 6 | Samuel Short | AUS | 7:45.02 | 03/08 |
| 7 | Kristóf RASOVSZKY | HUN | 7:47.04 | 04/13 |
| 8 | Kuzey Tuncelli | TUR | 7:47.46 | 03/07 |
| 9 | Dávid BETLEHEM | HUN | 7:48.02 | 04/13 |
| 10 | Alexander Stepanov | RUS | 7:49.36 | 04/15 |
This is almost like Germany is back where they were in the 80’s and the 90’s, when Germany (or actually West and East Germany) last were a powerhouse in mid-distance/distance swimming. I vividly remember legends like Michael Gross, Uwe Dassler, Stefan Pfeiffer, Thomas Fahrner, Rainer Henkel and Jorg Hoffman (I probabaly forgot a few).
Crazy with 2 Tunisians among the all-time top 3… And if Ahmed Jaouadi continues to develop, then we could quite possibly have 3 among the top 4…
Can’t Swimswam please interview some German coaches or their national team director? I’d love to hear what Germany has done lately to have so many great distance/mid-distance swimmers from different club teams.
Only Sven Schwarz trains in Hannover, all the other ones are in Magdeburg under Bernd Berkhahn; Oliver Klemet didn’t change his club until now, but also trains in Magdeburg.
I would love to listen to an interview that picks Bernd Berkhahn’s brain.
Maertens needs someone like Short to push him to a better time. 3:51 is way slow for a 3:39 400 freestyler.
Yeah, Short can act as a rabbit, he always attack the race from the start, that’s why I always enjoy his swims.
After the way he swam the 400 Fr, he went out too slow.
Martens interview on 400 free WR: just got back from altitude, no tapering, didn’t expect much of the time, but did want to get out fast, despite what his trainer was saying (Full interview: https://www.swimopenstockholm.se/post/lukas-m%C3%A4rtens-on-his-wr-race)
Sources are saying the German swimming federation is demanding the addition of the 4×800 freestyle relay at the LA 2028 Olympics
Just give them the gold and don’t bother swimming the relay.
China needs men’s 4×100 breaststroke, Russia needs men’s 4×100 backstroke, Germany needs 4×400 & 4×800 freestyle 😂😭😭
is there a vid?