There it is, the first medal for Austria at the Short Course World Championships in Budapest. The Tyrolean Bernhard Reitshammer is swimming vice world champion in the 100 m individual medley on the short course. The European champion defeated Carinthia in the semi-finals the evening before in Budapest’s Duna Arena on Friday evening Heiko Gigler fixed Austrian record by 0.19 seconds to 51.11 or his best time by 0.22 seconds. Gigler came sixth in 51.67. The dominant victory went to the Swiss favorite Noe Ponti in 50.33. Previously was Simon Bucher reached the final in the 100 m dolphin.
It is Austria’s twelfth World Cup medal on the short course, the seventh in silver. Most recently, the Styrian Caroline Pilhatsch came second in the 50 m backstroke in Hangzhou in 2018. After that, Felix Auböck won gold in the 400 m freestyle in Abu Dhabi in 2021. After gold for Markus Rogan in the 200 m backstroke in 2008, it was the second title for Austrian swimmers in the history of the World Cup – including the long course. It is Reitshammer’s third international medal – he won short course European Championship bronze and gold in 2021 and 2023.
And also over 100 m individual medley, in which he once again put in a strong second half of the race. After the dolphin and supine positions, the 30-year-old was only in seventh place in the final field of eight, but he lost 0.44 seconds to Ponti in the chest position and was only 0.08 seconds behind the Swiss at the last turn. Of course, he showed his class on the last length, while Reitshammer kept the third-placed Brazilian Caio Pumputis at a distance of 0.24 seconds. Gigler missed his first international individual medal by 0.32 seconds.
Long course vice world champion Bucher had previously come in eighth place in the dolphin final. In 49.29 seconds, the 24-year-old Tyrolean was 0.69 seconds faster than in the preliminary run, displacing the ninth-place finisher by 0.02 seconds. The medal decision is scheduled for Saturday (5:40 p.m.), although last year’s U23 European champion is not among the first medal candidates.
His compatriot Iris Julia Berger, on the other hand, advanced into a new red-white-red dimension in the women’s 100 m dolphin, even though the 20-year-old was eliminated in 56.38 seconds in eleventh place in the semifinals. But in the preliminary round she had already improved from 57.88 to 57.44. In the end, Berger beat the OSV record held by Birgit Koschischek since 2008 by no less than 1.04 seconds, and she was only 0.26 seconds short of advancing to the final. In the morning, Christopher Rothbauer was in 2:09.23 minutes. Eliminated in 24th place in the 200 m breaststroke.
Meanwhile, the world record series continued. Within 25 minutes, Gretchen Walsh set her fifth and sixth individual world records of the week in the 100 m dolphin in 52.87 seconds and the 100 m individual medley in 55.11 seconds. In the preliminary heat in the morning, the American had already beaten Margaret MacNeil’s (CAN) previous dolphin top mark by 0.81 seconds in 53.24. Kate Douglass, another US ace, set her third world record in the 200 m breaststroke of this short course season in 2:12.50, while compatriot Regan Smith took back sprint gold with the world record of 25.23 seconds.