In the final, the 20-year-old was only beaten by the outstanding Japanese Tomoru Honda (1:53.88) and the Italian Alberto Razzetti (1:54.65) with a time of 1:55.16 minutes. It was the first medal for the US student and only the seventh in OSV World Championships long course history.
Mirna Jukic (2005 and 2009/200 m breaststroke each) and Markus Rogan (2007/200 m backstroke) had previously won bronze. Rogan was also able to celebrate silver twice over the same distance (2001 and 2005), as did Maxim Podoprigora (2001/200 m breaststroke). As in the preliminary run and the semi-finals, where he achieved the fourth-fastest time on Tuesday, Espernberger was able to exploit his potential and undercut the norm for the Summer Olympic Games in Paris for the fifth time.
The 20-year-old from Linz is studying in the USA.
“I’m overwhelmed and still can’t believe it. It’ll take a while until I realize it,” said Espernberger. But you also have to put success into perspective. “Some big names were missing in the preliminary round. In Japan this time would have just been the final. But I’m happy that I won the bronze medal and came third,” summed up the OSV ace. During the race he was always in the fight for medals.
“I’m completely dead now after the race. The last 10 to 15 meters hurt quite a bit because the others were moving ahead so quickly and I had to keep up. If you go a little faster, you’ll notice it at the end little. But it was a good race and it just worked out.” The Pole Michal Chmielewski ended up in fourth place, 20 hundredths of a second behind the Upper Austrian.
“I have to look ahead straight away”
The fact that Espernberger was unable to break his personal best (1:54.69), which he set on December 2, 2023 at the US Open, and Dinko Jukic’s Austrian record (1:54.35) was bearable given the result . “I have to look ahead straight away. The next competition will come straight after, so it’s time to keep going,” said Espernberger. Previously, only Felix Auböck had made it to the long course final in the current title fights, but he didn’t get past eighth place in the 400 meter crawl.
Espernberger competed in his first major event at the Budapest European Championships in May 2021, and last summer at the Fukuoka World Cup, 1:57.36 minutes over his parade route meant he was in 20th place. He went into the current World Cup as eleventh fastest and rose So from outsider to medal winner. He is rarely seen in Austria because he went to the USA for a semester abroad in 2020 at the age of 16. “I wasn’t that good at English. Then I liked it so much and just stayed there,” the OSV athlete said recently.
In 2022 he went to the University of Tennessee in Knoxville; the softmore (note: second-year student) still has a good two years left of studying electrical engineering. Numerous important competitions await during this time, including the NCAA finals in March and then the big goal of the season, the Olympics.
Gigler missed promotion
The Carinthian Heiko Gigler missed the climb and the Olympic limit he was also aiming for in the 100 m freestyle run. In 49.16 seconds, he was 22nd out of 109 athletes, 0.23 seconds short of the semi-finals of the Top 16, and 0.82 seconds short of the Paris standard, which was nine hundredths below his Austrian record. Gigler will compete in the 50 m freestyle on Friday and on Sunday with the OSV relay in the 4 x 100 m medley.
“22 is actually my lucky number. But it’s just the dog inside, I can’t really get going. It’s more of a fight than easy swimming,” said Gigler, who had already fallen short of expectations at the European Short Course Championships in Otopeni in Romania in December . “I know I have it. Maybe the Olympic limit is too firmly anchored in the back of my mind.” The errors should now be analyzed and eliminated.
ePaper
Read the ePaper now!
Read the daily ePaper edition of the OÖNachrichten – browse through it digitally now!
to the e-paper
info By clicking on the icon you can add the keyword to your topics.
info By clicking on the icon you open your “my topics” page. You have saved 15 tags and need to remove tags.
info By clicking on the icon you can remove the keyword from your topics.
Add the topic to your topics.
2024-02-14 20:41:20
#Linz #swimmer #Espernberger #surprisingly #won #bronze #World #Championships
