Vasiliki Alexandri was in bed last weekend with angina and a fever of 39.5 degrees – yesterday the synchronized swimmer celebrated her first major medal in Rome with bronze at the European Championships in the technical solo freestyle (90.0156 points). The 24-year-old couldn’t really believe it. “I thought it was over at the weekend. I lost three days of training, but then tried to go into the water so that I could feel the water,” said Alexandri, who started the European Championships with a higher temperature.
For Alexandri the satisfaction was great, she was still bitterly disappointed after two fifth places two months ago at the World Championships in Budapest. Her triplets, Anna-Maria and Eirini, showed her with two duet bronze medals in the Hungarian capital that the leap onto the podium is realistic. The sisters were delighted that the third Alexandri also broke her medal spell yesterday: “Incredible! Since Mallorca (training camp; note) we’ve said that she can do it.” Bronze could only be the start of the triplets’ festival, since Anna-Maria and Eirini are on course for silver after yesterday’s preliminary fight in the free duet freestyle.
In hundredth bad luck
Austria’s pool swimmers were only missing a hundredth on medals yesterday. There were five of them for Simon Bucher, who hit the 50 meter dolphin in fifth place in the Austrian record time of 23.12 seconds. On his branch, the 100-meter specialist from Linz even left world record holder Andriy Govorov (Ukr/6th) behind.
It was even tighter for Valentin Bayer. The surprise man finished fourth in the 100m breaststroke in 59.54 seconds, missing the podium by four hundredths. ASV Linz athlete Bernhard Reitshammer finished eighth on the side track (1:00.12 minutes). Before that, Markus Rogan (1st) and Sebastian Stoss (7th) had only been an OSV duo in a long-track final in 2008 over 200 meters backstroke.
Lena Grabowski from Burgenland was in eighth place over 200 meters backstroke (2:11.23) until halfway through the race in the fight for the top three places.
Source: Nachrichten
