European Swimming Championships: Obock and the relay both won gold

Thanks to the double gold at the end, Austria rose to fifth place in the medal table, and the Swimming Federation (OSV) celebrated its best ever European Championship. Obock was delighted with his third medal at the European Long Course Championships and testing successful form on his show distance at the Olympic Games in Paris. For the first time, the 2021 World Short Course Champion has achieved gold at the European Championships. In 3:43.24 minutes, the dominant winner smashed his own two-year-old Austrian record by 0.34 seconds.

“This gold medal at the European Championships means a lot to me. I've never won one. I don't have a lot of medals yet and I really appreciate it. But the best thing of all is that I swam in the best time,” said the 27-year-old from Austria. Bottom: “This makes me so proud.”

The morning before his only competition in the Serbian capital, Obock had distanced himself from the competition by more than a second. In the final, he finished the race 4.20 seconds behind the second-place finisher, Greek Dimitrios Markos (3:47.44). Bronze went to Switzerland's Antonio Dijakovic (3:47.62).

Full of self-confidence for Paris

By passing the endurance test, Austria's best swimmer has gained a lot of self-confidence to achieve the biggest event of the season in Paris in less than five weeks. He succeeded in overcoming the first doubts that crept into him after the technological change. With his eye on the Olympics, he decided to return from England to Austria and made good adjustments in Mödling. Maintaining the new crawling technique all the time, even at high speeds, did not work as well as it should have.

“I knew that under Balázs Vihervari in the southern part of the city, I would get the attention and training I needed to swim this way again,” said the fourth Olympic medalist in the 400m freestyle at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. “The fact that I am having the best times and set a record in Austria is more than I could have hoped for.”

The 100th thriller of the season

In the relay the medal decision was very close. Austria won in a time of 3:33:41 minutes, just five and nine hundredths of a second ahead of Poland and Ukraine. The rear specialist handed Reitshammer to Baer in fourth place, just behind the leader. The breaststroke swimmer improved to third place, which was also held by Boucher (Delphin). Giegler (Crawle) shone in the last 100 meters and held off the Poles and Ukrainians.

His teammates especially celebrated “match winner” Giegler afterwards. “Haiku, just a disturbed pig,” Bucher said in an interview with ORF. “I thought I would do my best again,” Giegler explained. “There was probably still some anger about the 100m individual (we crossed the Olympic limit, note),” Pair added. “I would have said before the race that we would be satisfied with second place. But the European champion is of course the best.”

Five medals for Austria

For the first time since 2008 (Marcus Rogan and Mirna Jokic), Austrian swimmers celebrated the European Championship title in the long course. Bucher won other medals at this European Championships with a silver in the 100m dolphin and divers Anton Knoll and Dariush Lutfi a surprise gold in the synchronized competition. In the opening week of the European Championships, individual swimmer Vasiliki Alexandri won twice in the technical and free programme.