Lukas Märtens’ strength has visibly waned in his last Olympic race in 2024, the tenth since last Saturday. 1:55.97 minutes was a personal best, but was only enough for eighth place in the 200-meter backstroke race when Hungarian Hubert Kos won.
Märtens, the Olympic champion in the 400-meter freestyle, fifth in the 200-meter freestyle race on Monday, eighth in the 4×200-meter relay on Tuesday, had announced before the backstroke race that he would be happy if he came in eighth. That was confirmed afterwards. “It was very, very hard. I thought I was just a bit faster in the race. In the end, I’m super happy. Eighth. The eighth-best 200-meter backstroke swimmer in the world isn’t so bad after ten races. I think I can be very, very happy with that. I have to be. Personal best too – tip-top, actually.”
Kos, who, like the new French swimming hero Léon Marchand, trains in the United States with Bob Bowman, the former coach of Michael Phelps, dominated the race and crossed the finish line after 1:54.26 minutes. Second place went to the Greek Apostolos Christou (1:54.82 minutes) ahead of the Swiss Roman Mityukov (1:54.85 minutes). It was the first race in Nanterre in which only Europeans won medals. “Without Bob Bowman, I wouldn’t be sitting here tonight with a gold medal around my neck,” said Kos after the race.
Training colleague Marchand was also the star of the evening on Thursday, and it was no louder than during his performance in the semi-finals of the 200-meter individual medley. The 22-year-old swam with the fastest time (1:56.31 minutes) into the final on Friday (8:43 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the Olympics, on ARD and on Eurosport). Another victory would give him his fourth gold medal.
Earlier, 17-year-old Canadian Summer McIntosh swam to her second gold medal at these Olympic Games. In the third of four lanes in the 200-meter butterfly race, she overtook China’s Zhang Yufei, Olympic champion at the Tokyo Games three years ago and one of 23 swimmers to have tested positive for the heart medication trimetazidine (TMZ), which is banned in sport. McIntosh finished in an Olympic record time of 2:03.03 minutes, ahead of Regan Smith from the United States (2:03.84 minutes) and Zhang Yufei (2:05.09 minutes). At the beginning of the week, McIntosh had won the 400-meter individual medley and came second in the 400-meter freestyle.
In the 4×200 meter freestyle relay race, Summer McIntosh was also unable to help the Canadians to a medal. The Australians, led by 400 meter Olympic champion Ariarne Titmus, won ahead of the Americans, led by Katie Ledecky, who became the most successful American Olympic participant in history with her 13th Olympic medal. Bronze went to the Chinese, who had won the long freestyle relay in Tokyo in world record time.
As in Tokyo, Yang Jungxuan, whose name, like Zhang’s, is on the list of 23 people who tested positive on TMZ, jumped into the pool as the Chinese women’s starting swimmer. However, Zhang was not nominated. Also surprisingly absent was Tang Muhan, who had made headlines just this week. The New York Times had reported that she had tested positive for the steroid methandienone in 2022.
The Chinese anti-doping agency had provisionally suspended Tang for around a year – but ultimately explained the positive test result by saying that the swimmer had probably eaten a hamburger whose beef was contaminated with the steroid. As in the case of the 23 athletes who were exposed by TMZ, the World Anti-Doping Agency closed the case and did not appeal the decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
