Isabel Gose swam to the bronze medal in the longest race in the Olympic pool at the La Défense Arena in Nanterre. In a thrilling final sprint, Gose was able to pull away from the Italian Simona Quadarella and secure third place in the 1500 meter freestyle after 15:41.16 minutes. Her attack on second place was fended off by the French Anastasiia Kirpichnikova, who crossed the finish line after 15:40.35 minutes.
The American Katie Ledecky was once again the clear Olympic champion, finishing in 15:30.02 minutes. For Ledecky, it was her eighth Olympic victory and twelfth medal at the Olympic Games. With this Olympic victory, Ledecky has drawn level with Jenny Thompson, who also swam to eight Olympic victories, three silver and one bronze medal between 1992 and 2004.
A single arc of tension
In Nanterre, she had already won bronze in the 400-meter freestyle. Isabel Gose had finished that race in fifth place in a German record time, and on Wednesday evening she swam faster than any German woman before her. With her time, she beat the 15:42.91 minutes that had led Sarah Wellbrock to the bronze medal in Tokyo in 2021.
From the starting block, the race was full of suspense: Would the Italian be able to shake off the German, or would Isabel Gose overtake Simona Quadarella, who she followed for 1000 metres at a tenth of a second’s distance?
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After 1050 meters, Gose overtook Quadarella for the first time and countered. After 1250 meters, Gose overtook her again, by a few centimeters. The Italian struck back again. On the third-to-last lane, Isabel Gose increased the pace significantly: she overtook Quadarella and fended off her last counterattack.
“That was nothing new,” Isabel Gose said at the press conference about the duel with Quadarella. “It was a competition that I got to know all last season. I beat her in the real race.”
While she was still well behind Quadarella at the World Championships in Doha in the winter, who had won there in Ledecky’s absence, the 22-year-old Gose, who trains in Magdeburg, swam the stronger race. The ecstatic crowd, which had previously cheered Léon Marchand on to his second Olympic victory in the 200-meter butterfly, carried Kirpichnikova to silver. For Gose, the bronze medal also fulfilled a major career goal.
Bernd Berkhahn, the national coach who trains Gose in Magdeburg, said after the 400-meter freestyle race that the extrapolation of that performance, fifth place with a German record, was “very encouraging.” Berkhahn had already predicted that Simona Quadarella would be “one of the main opponents” in the 1500-meter race.
Gose has “trained fantastically, done incredible series” in training and “never had a breakdown or let up”. She will be able to approach the race “very confidently and courageously”: “In terms of fitness, Isa is definitely one of the strongest here.”
“You’re just grateful for what you can experience here. The international medals I’ve won so far have been elsewhere, so I had a little doubt. I was very excited and had respect for the 1500 meters. I’m just super happy that the hard work paid off and the plan worked out.”
Marchand provides the highlight
Lukas Märtens, who won the first German medal in the pool with his victory in the 400 meters on Saturday, then swam into the final of the 200 meter backstroke on Thursday as the fourth fastest. The highlights of the day were once again provided by Léon Marchand in the 200 meter breaststroke and the Chinese Pan Zhanle, who set the first world record of the Olympic competition week in Nanterre in the 100 meter freestyle.
Marchand, for whose ambition, with his third Olympic victory during an edition of the Olympic Games this week, he equalled the ski racer Jean-Claude Killy (1968), the biathlete Martin Fourcade (2018) and Paul Masson, who won three cycling races in 1896.
No other swimmer has ever achieved the triple victory of winning the 400-meter individual medley and the 200-meter breaststroke and butterfly. He will be competing in the preliminary round of the 200-meter individual medley on Thursday afternoon; a fourth Olympic victory would make him the most successful French athlete at a single Olympic Games.
“I knew I could do it,” said Marchand after the 200-meter breaststroke race. “Finish. Not win. That’s why I wanted to try it. I enjoyed every moment.” The atmosphere in the 200-meter butterfly race was “crazy,” said Marchand. The cheering of the spectators brought him closer to the Hungarian Kristof Milak, whom Marchand overtook in the final meters. Marchand finished in an Olympic record time of 1:51.21 minutes.
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The breaststroke race was far less close, with Marchand winning by just under a second ahead of Australian Zac Stubblety-Cook. Dutchman Caspar Corbeau finished third, more than two seconds behind Marchand.
In the final event of the evening, Pan Zhanle swam to the gold medal in the 100-meter freestyle in world record time. He finished in 46.40 seconds and improved the best time he set as the starting swimmer in the relay race at the Tokyo Games (46.80) by four tenths of a second.
Pan is not on the list of 23 Chinese swimmers who tested positive for the heart drug trimetazidine, which is banned in sport, in January 2021, but against whom no doping proceedings were initiated. The Australian won silver with a remarkably large gap of 1.08 seconds. Third place went to David Popovici from Romania, Olympic champion in the 200-meter freestyle, who finished one hundredth of a second after Chalmers. Josha Salchow, the first German swimmer since 1992 to reach the final in the 100-meter freestyle, came sixth in 47.80 seconds – a German record.
