Relax' mantra rejuvenates four-gold swimmer

"Oh my god." Leaning on a metal barrier, Florian Wellbrock does something unusual for him.

- Rohit Brijnath

"Oh my god."

Leaning on a metal barrier, Florian Wellbrock does something unusual for him. He's the poet laureate of endurance swimming, the lean, liquid prince of persistence who can't stop, whose hotel safe must barely close because it's stuffed with world championship golds from the 10km open water, the 5km, the 3km knockout sprint, the mixed 4x1,500m relay and he's not finished yet.

The German's life is measured in fractions but right now the seconds are slowly ticking away. He's a silent study in concentration. How do you tell a reporter the madness of your life, the rise, the Olympic gold in 2021, the fall thereafter, the struggles, the pressure so suffocating it "killed" him at the 2024 Paris Olympics, the revival?

So he thinks. For five seconds, 10, 14, the pause dramatic, broken only by the "oh my god" at the question, and then this man, who always finds things, like his way back to greatness, finds the words.

In a unique feat, Wellbrock collects gold in the 10km open water and 1,500m (in the pool) at the 2019 world championships and then gold and bronze in those events at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. "At this point," he says, "it felt like normal to be on the podium, to win a gold medal, but to be honest it's not normal."