World Championships: Leonie Beck Secures 10K World Title; Chelsea Gubecka, Katie Grimes Earn Medals & Olympic Spots

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Leonie Beck -- Photo Courtesy: Giorgio Scala / Deepbluemedia / Insidefoto

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World Championships: Leonie Beck Secures 10K World Title; Chelsea Gubecka, Katie Grimes Earn Medals & Olympic Spots

One year ago, Sharon van Rouwendaal of the Netherlands secured the world title in the 10-kilometer swim by just a half-second over Germany’s Leonie Beck. This year, Beck exploded on the sixth and final lap of the course and opened a gap over her competition. From there, she would not be denied a trip to the gold-medal podium.

Beck allowed the pack to lead early on, and she fell as far as 17.2 seconds off the lead during the fourth of six laps in the race. But she steadily closed the gap, moving into the top 10 at the start of the final lap before taking over down the stretch. Beck finished in 2:02.34.0 to secure gold.

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Leonie Beck — Photo Courtesy: Giorgio Scala / Deepbluemedia / Insidefoto

“I’m really grateful, really happy with the race. I thought I could manage the first half to save a bit of energy. The last half, I was fighting for my life. It was really hard for me, and I think this day, it’s really a good day for me,” Beck said.

“I tried to stay calm in the beginning, not to lose the pack but not to swim too fast. I was always somewhere in the top-20 I guess, and then the last lap, I was fourth, but I thought, ‘Wow, it’s getting really hard,’ and I was exhausted. But I didn’t stop fighting. I fought so much. I never stopped. At one point, I caught them, and the last 400 meters, I think I was a bit on the right. I didn’t recognize that I was passing them, but I didn’t watch. I was just swimming and fighting to the end.”

Beck has spent the last two years training in Italy alongside the men who finished 1-2 in the 10K race at the 2022 Worlds, Gregorio Paltrinieri and Domenico Acerenza. Last year, Beck was part of Germany’s gold in the team open water event at the World Championships while also winning the aforementioned 10K silver plus 5K bronze, so this raced marked her first individual world title.

Meanwhile, Australia’s Chelsea Gubecka took silver in 2:02.38.1. Gubecka distinguished herself on the final two laps, pulling into a lead with one loop of the course remaining, and even when Beck pushed ahead, Gubecka never let the rest of the field catch up.

“This is my sixth 10K at this level, so I’ve had a lot of experience in this event, and I guess I used that to my advantage today,” Gubecka said. “I’m really pleased with the preparation that I’ve had, and I felt very confident, especially going into the last lap, knowing I’d done everything in my preparation to get there.”

Heading into the finishing shoot, the top two positions were clearly determined coming into the finishing stretch, but it was a photo finish for third place. Van Rouwendaal came into the finish pad at nearly the same time as Brazil’s Ana Marcela Cunha and the United States’ Katie Grimes. Van Rouwendaal appeared to be slightly ahead of her competitors, but she chose to take one short stroke instead of a longer finish. That allowed Grimes to get her hand on the pad a fraction quicker than of her Dutch and Brazilian rivals.

Grimes’ official time was 2:02:42.3, a tenths ahead of a tie for fourth between van Rouwendaal and Cunha (2:02:42.4). Those two swimmers are the most recent Olympic champions in the event, with van Rouwendaal winning gold in 2016 and silver in 2021 in addition to her 2022 world title while Cunha touched first in Tokyo two years ago.

“I was really just trying to not look over at them,” Grimes said of the two swimmers she was racing. “They were there, but I was just trying to focus on having a perfect finish. That’s something that the past couple days, I’ve been spending like 15 minutes working on timing it perfectly in case it is a three or maybe eight-woman finish.

“I wanted to make sure that going into that chute, I had the best position, but I was a little scared to look over there because I knew it would be really tight. They’re both incredible swimmers, so I was just happy to be in the mix.”

🇩🇪LEONIE BECK
New World Champion in the 10km event!! #AQUAFukuoka23 pic.twitter.com/HmX8QIfMSY

— World Aquatics (@WorldAquatics) July 15, 2023

Italy’s Ginerva Taddeucci (2:02:46.7), Germany’s Lea Boy (2:03:12.9), the U.S.’s Mariah Denigan (2:03:13.5), Hungary’s Bettina Fabian (2:03:15.2) and Italy’s Giulia Gabbrielleschi (2:03:15.7) rounded out the top 10.

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Chelsea Gubecka — Photo Courtesy: Giorgio Scala / Deepbluemedia / Insidefoto

The three medalists in the race, Beck, Gubecka and Grimes, have secured the first qualifying spots for the Tokyo Olympics, as per World Aquatics qualifying procedures. The other 19 spots in the race will be determined at the next World Championships in February 2024, but the medal-winning trio has the burden of Olympic selection out of the way. Beck qualified for her third Olympics after finishing fifth in the 10K in 2021 and before that swimming the 800 freestyle at the 2016 Games. Gubecka and Grimes will each be heading to her second Olympic Games after Gubecka raced the 10K in 2016 and Grimes raced the 800 free in 2021.

“It is exciting,” Gubecka said on her Olympic qualification. “Obviously, going into this race, that was a big goal, to try to get there, and that was our whole preparation, building around that. I’m very excited to have my ticket potentially ratified there. I can’t wait to get back onto the Olympic stage. This will be my second Olympic Games, so I’m looking forward to the preparation to come.

Grimes, who was the silver medalist in the 1500 freestyle and 400 IM at last year’s World Championships before placing fifth in the 10K, becomes the first U.S. athlete in any sport to qualify for the Paris Olympics.

Special thanks to World Aquatics for providing reporting from the post-race press conference.

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