FLASH! Lukas Märtens Takes Down 400 Free World Record
Lukas Märtens has downed the 400 free world record in 3:39.96 at the Swim Open Stockholm to consign to history one of the global standards that had stood since the supersuited era of 2009.
The Olympic champion took 0.11 from the previous WR of 3:40.07 set by fellow German Paul Biedermann at the 2009 World Championships at the peak of the shiny suit chaos.
Märtens splits:
Biedermann splits: 54.42/1:51.02/2:47.17/3:47.07
The effect of the supersuits is plain to see with Biedermann splitting 52.90 (27.13/25.77) on the final 100 and Märtens going 55.95 (28.38/27.57) after reaching 300m 3.16 inside WR pace.
Coming into the race, Märtens’ PB stood at 3:40.33 from last year’s German Championships which had elevated him to fourth performer all-time behind Biedermann, Ian Thorpe (3:40.08) and Sun Yang (3:40.14). There he had a 2.36 margin over the WR with 100 to go before falling shy.
Märtens – who was seven when Biedermann set the WR on 26 July 2009 – went on to win an historic Olympic title last year in Paris where he clocked 3:41.78 ahead of Elijah Winnington (3:42.21) and Kim Woomin (3:42.50).
With that he became the first German man to win a gold medal in the pool at the Olympics since 1988, when Michael Gross of West Germany won the 200 fly and Uwe Dassler of East Germany took the same 400 free. (Florian Wellbrock won open water gold in Tokyo.) Britta Steffen had been the last German gold medallist, man or woman, in the 50 and 100 free in 2008.
While Märtens understandably commanded the spotlight in Stockholm, he led home a German clean sweep of the podium ahead of Paris 10k silver medallist Oliver Klemet (3:43.40) and Wellbrock (3:45.29).
Four individual men’s records still stand from the supersuit era: Cesar Cielo (50 free, 20.91), Biedermann (200 free, 1:42.00), Zhang Lin (800 free, 7:32.12) and Aaron Peirsol (200 back, 1:51.92). Liu Zige’s 2:01.81 200 fly is the sole record in women’s individual events.
