European Swimming Championships

Reitshammer & Gigler without a medal in the breaststroke sprint

Bernhard Reitshammer

(Bild: GEPA)

Bernhard Reitshammer and Heiko Gigler missed out on a medal in the 50 m breaststroke at the European Swimming Championships in Belgrade!

Reitshammer came fourth in the final on Saturday with a time of 27.07 seconds, five hundredths of a second behind third-placed Israeli Kristian Pitshugin, while Gigler finished 0.18 seconds behind his compatriot in fifth place. Gold went to the Turk Huseyin Emre Sakci in 26.92 seconds, silver to the German Noel de Geus.

Kreundl: "I can be very satisfied with that!"
The competitions were delayed by a few minutes immediately afterwards due to the bad weather. Lena Kreundl had to wait for her final in the 200 m medley. The Upper Austrian finished sixth with a time of 2:13.55 minutes, beating her mark from the semi-final (2:13.25). Gold went to Anastasia Gorbenko from Israel (2:09.70). "It's been an incredible run so far and I think I can be very satisfied," said Kreundl.

Reitshammer: "I'm already very sad!"
Reitshammer was in second place overall after the semi-finals and was a medal candidate at the start. However, the Tyrolean was unable to improve on his hoped-for time of under 27 seconds. Sakci lived up to his role as favorite, however, winning the first gold for Turkey at the European Championships. "I am very sad. A medal is always a goal. And if it doesn't work out by five hundredths, then of course you're sad," said Reitshammer. "Now there's the relay tomorrow. Let's see what happens there."

Gigler: "Can be more than satisfied!"
Gigler was in double action in the evening, as he and Fabienne Pavlik had both made it into the semi-finals in the morning. Pavlik finished 14th in the 200 m dolphin preliminaries, while the Carinthian came seventh in the 50 m crawl. However, the final remained out of reach for Gigler. He finished his semi-final heat in eighth place in 22.24 seconds and remained above the Olympic limit for this distance.

He took the thunderstorm interruption of 30 minutes in his stride: "Thank God it was two short and fast races, so the lightning didn't hit me. I'm a crawl specialist. As much as I train breaststroke, I can be more than happy with a fifth place in the European Championships."

Pavlik: "I'm just very happy!"
Pavlik also finished seventh in her heat. With a time of 2:15.31 minutes over the long distance, she still set a new personal best. The young athlete had to take a step back recently due to her A-levels. "I just wanted to see how things went at the European Championships. And now I've made the semi-finals. That's really nice. I'm just really happy," said the 19-year-old.