Reaching the final over 100 meters dolphin at the long-distance swimming world championships in Budapest was a huge success for Simon Bucher, but the ASV Linz athlete showed yesterday that being part of the illustrious circle was by no means everything for him.
The 22-year-old, who also shaved off his beard for the title fights in order to be able to glide even faster through the water, was even on course for a medal up to 15 meters before the end of lane two and ended up sixth in 51.28 seconds, and stayed there only a tenth above his Austrian record set the day before. The Hungarian favorite Kristof Milak took gold in 50.14.
“I felt it a little from the back, and the transition after the start wasn’t good either,” said Bucher, after his biggest success to date, quarreled a bit with the time, but less so with the placement. “I can be extremely satisfied with what I’ve achieved here.” And in just a few weeks, Bucher could see a lot again when the EM in Rome starts in mid-August.
It was already the fourth top six placement of the OSV pool swimmers in Hungary. Felix Auböck was fourth in the 400 m crawl and fifth in the 200 m crawl, Bernhard Reitshammer was fourth in the 50 m breaststroke. Before that, there had only been four red-white-red finals at the times of Markus Rogan, Mirna Jukic, Fabienne Nadarajah and Maxim Podoprigora in Barcelona in 2003 and in Montreal in 2005. In 2001 in Fukuoka there were five. Before 2001, a ninth place in Madrid in 1986 was Austria’s best result.
Austria’s 4×100 men’s medley relay (Reitshammer, Bucher, Heiko Gigler, Valentin Bayer) is still in action today on the last day of the pool swimmers’ competition.
The Steyrerin Lena Kreundl, on the other hand, also missed the advancement in the third discipline. On Friday morning, the 24-year-old over 50 m breaststroke in 32.17 seconds with 32nd place overall was 1.15 seconds short of progressing to the semi-finals of the top 16.
From an international point of view, the Swede Sarah Sjöström won the fourth World Championship title over 50 m dolphin en suite in 24.95 seconds or her 19th World Championship medal.
Collapsed Alvarez skipped
Synchronized swimmer Anita Alvarez did not start in the team final of the World Championships in Budapest after her collapse. The 25-year-old watched the performance of her eight US teammates, who ended up ninth, from the edge of the pool. After the performance, Alvarez hugged her colleagues. Immediately after her free solo freestyle on Wednesday, Alvarez passed out in the World Cup pool, went under and was rescued by her trainer Andrea Fuentes and another person.
Source: Nachrichten
