Germany’s top swimmer Florian Wellbrock actually wanted to continue chasing titles and medals at the European Swimming Championships in Rome in August. But that is now uncertain. A corona infection throws the Olympic champion back hard.
Florian Wellbrock has started a competition against time again. That’s always the case with the best German swimmer of the present. But this time it’s not about best times in the water. This time it’s a battle with himself. Will his body be able to perform as well as it did four weeks before the European Championships in Rome on August 11th?
Review: Wellbrock made history at the World Championships in Budapest. As the first German swimmer after Michael Groß, the 24-year-old won five medals: world champion over 5 kilometers and with the mixed relay in open water, silver over 800 meters freestyle and bronze over 1500 meters freestyle and over 10 kilometers in open water. “It was an experiment, no one knew if and how I would get through the five routes. It was very nice that I ended up going home with five medals,” says Wellbrock.
Neither Magdeburg nor his trainer Bernd Berkhahn liked what came after: Corona. The virus infection had caught several German swimmers. “Luckily for me only after the World Cup,” he reports and continues: “If you hear how Corona went with others, I probably had a more severe course with fever, sore throat and cough. That set me back a week and a half.”
Instead of training and taking part in the open water competition in Paris, Wellbrock stayed in bed. The recovery phase was good for him, but it came at the wrong time. “Including the World Cup and the preparation for it, I haven’t trained properly for six or seven weeks now. You can see that very clearly in the water,” says Wellbrock and, after a week and a half of training, exaggeratedly compares himself to a beginner: “I’m just learning to swim again.”
His plans have thus been thrown overboard. He decided not to take part in a training camp in Mallorca in preparation for the European Championships in Rome. “I could have traveled to train there for three or four days. It’s better to sleep and train at home,” says the open water Olympic champion from Tokyo.
Wellbrock leaves open whether he even goes to the EM. Because the Magdeburger is always ambitious. “When I start, I want to win,” he says. Also at the continental championships. Coach Bernd Berkhahn had already declared after the World Championships that he didn’t even rule out five titles with five starts: “If you prepare perfectly and if he’s healthy.” That will not happen in Rome now, because Wellbrock cannot face this mammoth program like at the World Cup under the given circumstances. “Now I have to see what’s possible. But I’m definitely ruling out five starts like at the World Cup. If I start, we’ll definitely limit the starts, but that’s still being discussed,” says Wellbrock.