World Aquatics Championships: German Florian Wellbrock wins 10km after water quality delay
Australia’s Moesha Johnson wins women’s race in Singapore after open water events had been postponed because of high E coli bacteria levels
Germany’s Florian Wellbrock won the men’s 10km open water race at the world championships in Singapore on Wednesday after the race had been postponed for several hours because of poor water quality.
Wellbrock, the gold medallist at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, won his third open water world title in a time of one hour, 59 minutes, 55.50 seconds at the Sentosa Island course after the race finally began at 1pm.
“It was really tough today. I think it was the warmest waters that we’ve had to race in,” Wellbrock said.
“I had one year to prepare for this. We did a lot of heat training and I think that was the key today to me taking the gold.”
Italy’s Gregorio Paltrinieri took silver 3.70 seconds behind, followed by Australia’s Kyle Lee.
Governing body World Aquatics had postponed the race on Wednesday morning because water quality was “exceeding acceptable thresholds”.