Former top swimmer Alexandra Wenk in an interview: “It’s crazy how little responsibility some parents show”

SZ: Ms. Wenk, you were considered one of the greatest German swimming talents, won your first German championship title at the age of 13, and later became European champion as part of the women’s and mixed relay team and won bronze at the World Championships. Do you actually still go into the pool to do your laps like you used to?

Alexandra Wenk: Honestly? Not at all since I ended my career in 2021. I now enjoy training other people more than swimming myself. When you have trained as intensively and often as we did back then, with up to ten water training sessions and four strength training sessions per week, then it no longer has much to do with just having fun. It’s more like a job, a purpose in life, with all the competition and thinking.

You retired rather quietly after long-term shoulder and knee injuries before the Tokyo Olympics.

I didn’t want to open such a big door, I first wanted to come to terms with the fact that I was no longer a competitive swimmer. I had actually planned to quit after the 2020 Summer Games. After the corona-related postponement to 2021, it was clear to me that I didn’t want to do another year.

With regard to your career, what remains besides the many medals? You still hold the German record for the 200 meter medley. At Olympia In 2012 and 2016, however, you were rather disappointed and didn’t make it to the finals.

I had to learn to deal with the fact that I wasn’t able to perform at my best in London in 2012 and especially in Rio in 2016. It took time to come to terms with these defeats. I can now say that I have made peace with it and have found enough distance from competitive swimming.

Is that the dark side – the constant pressure to succeed?

There are many things in top-class sport that shape you for the rest of your life. You learn to set goals and go there step by step. But the things you do should also bring you joy. And shortly before I stopped, I reached this point where I felt: Competitive sport no longer brings me joy, it is no longer enriching for me.

At 25, you were still comparatively young to end your career.

At that time, I had already been doing high-performance sport for 15 years, with everything that goes with it. And I planned my studies to be part-time and did without a lot of things. The joy of sport, no matter in what form, has remained with me. Just without the extreme ambition and pressure that I put on myself and that partly came from outside.

You and three friends have now founded the Swimunity swimming school, which is located in… München Offers courses in Giesing-Harlaching and in the Olympic swimming pool. Why?

While I was studying, I had a mini-job at a swimming school here in Munich – and realized that it was incredibly important to teach children to swim. I just noticed how few children can swim, and how well they can swim. Children have to learn this because it is simply essential for their survival. I once learned from the newspaper that a 15-year-old drowned in the Eisbach. Or there was the father whose daughter was taking a private swimming course with me. He told me that she was terrified of water because she saw another child drown in the pool while on vacation when she was seven. Then I thought, it’s amazing how little responsibility some parents actually show when they obviously didn’t enable their child to stay afloat.

What was it like in your family? One can assume that your mother, who once won silver in the European Championships in the pool for Romania, took great care to teach you to swim.

My mother and my father were very insistent that my brother and I could swim quickly, there was no discussion about that. Just so we can jump around the pool alone on vacation without them having to worry all the time. However, I fought tooth and nail to learn to swim with my mother. I learned it at a swimming school, but it was only at the club that I realized what it meant to be able to swim really well. Because the others were much, much faster than me.

According to a Forsa survey from 2022, 20 percent of all children between the ages of six and ten in this country cannot swim.

Yes, and even if they have made the seahorse, they can stay afloat, but we don’t need to talk about real swimming yet. In my opinion, the child can only swim after receiving the bronze or silver badge at the earliest. Continuous practice is so important. You won’t learn to swim in an hour or two, it will take time. Referring to the competitive sport that I used to do: There is a reason why the Olympic Games only take place every four years. Because you can’t improve things overnight.

What obstacles are placed in the way of children improving in the water?

The demand for swimming courses is definitely there. But the courses are often overcrowded, there is a lack of water, especially in cities like Munich – and due to the corona pandemic, there was no opportunity to learn to swim for many months. This is also why I sat down with my three former training partners Janina Banse, Paulina Böger and Anna Reger-Reisinger in February 2024 and presented my project to them.

When does it start?

Very soon. We start our children’s swimming courses on January 13th, but we also offer personal training. In fact, the children’s swimming courses have so far been less well booked. We ask ourselves: Why is that? About the price? Energy prices have simply risen, and the costs are correspondingly higher. The BLSV continues to subsidize swimming courses for preschool children with 50 euros. It should perhaps also be mentioned that this subsidy even exists.

Was it generally difficult to implement the project?

First of all, you have to say that all four of us girls do this part-time. But we were really, really lucky with the Munich public utilities that they gave us the time in the pools. It took until the end of 2024 to find water areas and found the GmbH, but it worked. I think others aren’t so lucky because it’s so difficult to even find open water. And there are so many school swimming pools in Munich that remain unused on the weekends and are then empty, even though the energy costs still have to be paid. I don’t understand something like that.

You no longer do your own laps, but are now in the water with children and teaching them how to swim. Does this perhaps bring back the fun that you had lost in competitive sports?

I think it’s so cool to see the children’s progress. It’s much more fascinating to be a trainer, to impart your knowledge to other people and thereby make them better. If a child completes eight units and can ideally swim and dive, then that makes me happy.