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Kristóf Rasovszky won the gold medal and Dávid Betlehem won the Olympic quota with his sixth place in the 10 km open water swimming at the World Aquatics Championships in Doha on Sunday.
The 26-year-old Rasovszky, a five-time Olympic silver medalist, won the second world title of his career: in 2019 in the 5km in Gwangju and now in the Olympic qualification event. The 20-year-old Betlehem secured his Olympic bid with one of the best individual World Championship results of his career. The young Hungarian finished fifth at the 2022 World Championships in Budapest.
In the Olympic qualification event, 79 athletes competed for the final quota, including all three Fukuoka podium finishers, Germany’s defending champion Florian Wellbrock, Kristóf Rasovszky and Germany’s Oliver Klemet. In addition to them, the top 13 and one swimmer per continent (from a country that did not have an Olympic competitor) could qualify for the Olympic Games.
Bethlehem had a chance to win the bronze medal in the final stages, but after a huge battle he finished sixth.
Rasovszky won the first medal for Hungary at the World Championships in Doha.
Gold medalist Kristóf Rasovszky (C), silver medalist Marc-Antonie Olivier (L) of France and bronze medalist Hector Pardoe (R) of Great Britain. Photo: MTI/Derencsényi István
Kristóf Rasovszky’s goals remain unchanged after his World Championship victory, as he will be going for a medal in the 10 km open water swimming event at the Paris Olympics.
“I came here after last year’s World Championships with the idea of winning a medal again, which would be a good way to start the year, so I tried to put as much as I could into it. Here the conditions were very favorable for me, as there was a bit of wind, it was choppy and the water was rather cooler than usual,” Rasovszky said.
The 26-year-old swimmer added that, as the reigning world champion, everyone is expecting him to say that he is going to Paris for gold, but he is still “only” focused on the podium:
“It is going to be very tough, there are a lot of us, the French at home or the defending champion Florian Wellbrock, and we have seen that the other guys who already had an Olympic quota, apart from me, did not do very well.
Everybody is preparing for Paris, and if I win a medal I will be satisfied and of course gold could be part of it, anything can happen,”
he said.
The other Hungarian competitor in the event, Dávid Betlehem, missed the podium only in the final meters, leaving him disappointed: “At the start I was holding on very well, I was sure I was on the podium, and then everyone on my left side wanted to ‘kill’ me. I am really angry about that, I lost a podium because of that, and it hurts. The Olympic quota is not a cure, I think it would have been a miracle if I had not qualified, it is more annoying that I got stuck at the end,” he explained.
Results:
1. KRISTÓF RASOVSZKY 1:48:21.2
2. Marc-Antonie Olivier (France) 1:48:23.6
3. Hector Pardoe (Great Britain) 1:48:29.2
…6. DÁVID BETLEHEM 1:48:29.9
Via MTI, Featured image: MTI/Derencsényi István