Kristóf Rasovszky won a gold medal and Dávid Betlehem won an Olympic quota in the open water swimmers’ 10-kilometer competition on Sunday at the World Championships in Doha, reports MTI.
With this, Rasovszky won the second world championship title of his career, but he was able to win for the first time in the 10-kilometer Olympic event, in 2019 he won the gold medal in the 5-kilometer race in Gwangju. The 26-year-old swimmer won the silver medal in this event at the Fukuoka World Championships last year, and as in the Tokyo Olympics, he was also overtaken by the German Florian Wellbrock, but this time his rival was well behind, finishing in 29th place.
“I came here following last year’s World Cup thinking that I would like to win a medal once more, which would be a good start to the year, so I tried to do as much as possible. Here, the conditions were very favorable for me, as there was a little wind, waves and the water was cooler than usual,” said Rasovszky following the race, adding that in Paris he will continue to focus only on the podium, because as it seemed, apart from that those who already had an Olympic quota did not perform very well, everyone wants to be in top shape for Paris.
20-year-old Dávid Betlehem, on the other hand, achieved the best individual World Cup result of his adult career by now it seems certain that he finished sixth, with this, together with Rasovszky, he already secured his Olympic start. In the mixed zone, despite the acquired quota, Betlehem was a bit angry, as he said, he held his own very well at the hairline, he was sure of the podium, and then everyone from the left started to harass him. “This all makes me very angry, I missed the podium because of this, it can hurt. The Olympic quota is not a cure at all, I think it would have been a miracle if I didn’t get out, it’s more annoying that I got stuck in the end.” – He told.
Rasovszky won Hungary’s first medal at the World Championships in Doha, but it was already possible to obtain an Olympic quota yesterday, earned by Bettina Fábián, who finished in twelfth place in the women’s 10 kilometer race. We talked with Kristóf Rasovszky following last year’s world championship in Fukuoka, you can read our article here.
