Swimming - Short course

Luka Mladenovic wins European Championship bronze in the 200 m breaststroke!

Luka Mladenovic(Bild: GEPA)

Luka Mladenovic from Salzburg won his second European Swimming Championship bronze medal on the short course in Lublin on Friday!

The 21-year-old improved his Austrian record of 2:03.42 minutes set the day before in the semi-finals of the 200 m breaststroke to 2:02.48, leaving almost half a second gap to fourth place. The Tyrolean Simon Bucher finished seventh in the 100 m dolphin final, while in the semifinals Heiko Gigler finished tenth in the 100 m crawl and Bernhard Reitshammer 15th in the 200 m medley ...

Mladenovic was only fourth after the first of the eight lengths, after that he was consistently in third place. His best performance until Thursday was 2:04.84. He had already won bronze in the 100m breaststroke at these championships, and Heiko Gigler also finished third in the 100m medley. Mladenovic still has the breaststroke sprint ahead of him, in which he reached the long course world championship final in the summer. Including all international junior medals, he now has nine podium places, including three Junior World Championship medals in 2022 and three U23 European Championship gold medals in 2025.

Mladenovic: "When it's on, it's on"
 "When it's on, it's on," said Mladenovic, referring to his earlier good training in Salzburg. He has been living, studying and training at the University of Minnesota since August. "That's where I found my speed. And that works really well on the short course. I'm really looking forward to it. To be honest, I'll only realize it in a few days when the competition is over." Gold in the longest breaststroke distance went to Spain's Carles Coll Marti in 2:00.86, silver to Dutch world record holder Caspar Corbeau in 2:01.27.

Bucher's time of 49.68 seconds was just 47 hundredths short of the bronze medal won by Italy's Michele Busa. Before that, France's Maxime Grousset managed a perfect revenge on Noe Ponti in 48.10, one hundredth of a second ahead of him. The Swiss swimmer had won the 100m medley the previous evening, one hundredth ahead of Grousset. "I would have won a medal with my best time," said Bucher. "I can't seem to go any faster at the moment. I don't know where I should have got that from."

Gigler improved his almost one-year-old OSV record in the 100 m crawl by 0.16 seconds to 46.30 seconds. In the last few meters, the Carinthian gave up the 7/100 away from the final. "To be eliminated with an Austrian record sounds a bit wrong. The density is incredibly brutal. I'm also no longer the youngest and need longer to regenerate," explained the 29-year-old. Reitshammer finished in 1:57.24 minutes and was eliminated quite clearly, but was satisfied: "It was a good race, the time is also good."