{"id":592637,"date":"2024-07-27T12:02:33","date_gmt":"2024-07-27T19:02:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/?p=592637"},"modified":"2024-07-27T14:53:11","modified_gmt":"2024-07-27T21:53:11","slug":"paris-olympics-day-1-final-lukas-martens-claims-historic-400-free-gold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/paris-olympics-day-1-final-lukas-martens-claims-historic-400-free-gold\/","title":{"rendered":"Paris Olympics, Day 1 Finals: Lukas Martens Claims Historic 400 Free Gold"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paris Olympics, Day 1 Final: Lukas Martens Claims Historic 400 Free Gold<\/strong><\/p>\n

The electricity in the air for the men\u2019s 400 freestyle final at the Fukuoka World Championships last summer presaged a doozy of an Olympic final 12 months on.<\/p>\n

The pieces haven\u2019t exactly fallen into place. But the resulting chaos in Paris still lived up to the billing.<\/p>\n

Lukas Martens<\/strong> held off a pack of chasers to win Olympic gold in 3:41.78, and another Olympics brought another outside lane surprise via Kim Woo-Min<\/strong> of South Korea getting bronze.<\/p>\n

Martens is the first German man to win a gold medal in the pool at the Olympics since 1988, when Michael Gross<\/strong> of West Germany won the 200 fly and Uwe Dassler<\/strong> of East Germany took this same 400 free. (Florian Wellbrock<\/strong> won open water gold in Tokyo.) Britta Steffen<\/strong> is the last German gold medalist, man or woman, in the 50 and 100 free in 2008.<\/p>\n

The importance of the moment was a lot for Martens to take in during the moment.<\/p>\n

“I was overwhelmed,” Martens said. “I stopped, looked at the scoreboard and thought, ‘nah, that can’t be right.’ That was anything but foreseeable, after this season and after all the exertion, even if all the performances beforehand were good.<\/p>\n

“I would say it was a controlled race, a solid race. The last few meters hurt a bit. My time is OK, I don’t have to hide. During the race, I thought I was swimming against my training colleagues in Magdeburg.”<\/p>\n