PARIS: Germany’s Lukas Maertens said he was “overwhelmed” on Saturday after fighting his way to an Olympic gold medal in the men’s 400m freestyle but always believed he would come out on top.
The 22-year-old held the 350m world record at La Defense Arena before fading in the final stretch to touch in 3min 41.78s ahead of Australia’s Elijah Winnington (3:42.21).
South Korean world champion Kim Woo-min took bronze in 3:42.50.
It was Maertens’ first Olympic medal after debuting at the postponed Tokyo 2020 Games.
“I’m extremely happy and overwhelmed, I can’t put into words what I’m feeling right now,” he said.
“I stopped and looked at the scoreboard and thought, ‘No, that can’t be true.’
His rise to the top was at stake.
He entered the race as a heavy favorite after setting his fastest time since 2012 in April and going over a second faster than anyone else this season.
Paul Biedermann’s world record of 3:40.07 has stood since the supersuit era in 2009 and Maertens, pushed by Kim, appeared on the track to beat him until he ran out of gas.
China’s Sun Yang came close to breaking Biedermann’s mark at the 2012 London Olympics, but no one else came close until this year at Maertens.
Maertens admitted that he was aiming for the record.
“Yes, but the goal was definitely a medal. If it was bronze, it would be OK. I thought about gold and now it actually came true,” he said.
“A lot of people expected the record to fall – I don’t care, I’m up now.”
“It means everything to me – you can see my performance progress,” he added. “There are many reasons. I always believed in myself, the training did not always go well, I had some failures, but the important thing is to learn from the failures and keep it in training.”
