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Germany's Florian Wellbrock wins gold in men's marathon swim

Posted at 7:52 PM, Aug 04, 2021
and last updated 2021-08-04 20:12:59-04

Germany's Florian Wellbrock won the men's marathon swim on Thursday in Tokyo, taking home his first-ever Olympic gold medal. Wellbrock, 23, finished the ten-kilometer, open water swim event in 1:48:33 and won Germany its ninth gold medal at the Tokyo Olympic Games.

Wellbrock may have never finished first on the podium, but he's no stranger to medaling: the Magdeburg native earned a bronze medal at the men's 1500-meter freestyle on Sunday, making him just the second athlete to medal in swimming and marathon swimming at one Olympic Games.

Though Wellbrock led the pack from start to finish, he wasn't far ahead of Hungary's Kristof Rasovszky. Rasovszky won a silver medal with a time of 1:48:59, just barely over 25 seconds behind Wellbrock. Italy's Gregorio Paltrinieri, the silver medalist, was hardly two seconds behind Rasovszky, finishing in 1:49:01.

Jordan Wilmovsky, representing the U.S., finished tenth in a field of 26 swimmers. He was roughly three minutes behind the gold medalist, with a time of 1:51:40.