Taliso Engel swam stroke by stroke towards the finish, with no one near him to his right or left. He had already secured first place, and in the final meters it was all about setting a world record. It would have been his second of the day. In the preliminary round of the 100-meter breaststroke for swimmers with visual impairments in his class, he had set a new personal best of 1:01.84 minutes. In the final, he was six hundredths slower.
“At the moment,” Engel said later, there is “not really” any competition in sight. For the 22-year-old, it was already his second gold medal after the one at the Tokyo Games. And that’s why he already has other goals: “To be involved in the Olympics,” as he cautiously put it.
:Golden German Thursday
Three golds, two silvers, two bronzes: After a day of frenzy, “Team D” is climbing the medal table. The swimmers Elena Semechin and Taliso Engel as well as the shooter Natascha Hiltrop are in the spotlight.
The German swimming team won two gold medals on Thursday evening in the La Defense Arena in Paris, and both were clear victories for the favorites. Elena Semechin, who is also visually impaired, also defended her title in her 100-meter breaststroke race, improving her own world record in the process. In her case, even taking part in these games was a dramatic story; after the Paralympics in Tokyo, she was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and after chemotherapy she was swimming again.
The diagnosis, she said after the race, had “knocked her out of life for a while”. With her example, she would “show viewers that you can continue to live your wishes and dreams”.
Olympia? “If it gets closer to one minute, the whole thing is not far away,” says Engel
Engel’s story, on the other hand, takes place mainly in the swimming pool, where he has become so much faster in recent years that he has reached the borderline of being an Olympic athlete. In 2023, he was the only athlete with a disability to swim against swimmers without disabilities at the German Championships; he does that anyway in training in Nuremberg. With his world record, he would have been only 1.9 seconds short of a qualifying time for the semi-finals at the Olympics this summer.
Engel’s preparation for the Paralympics was complicated. He graduated from high school in 2022, and since 2023 he has not been able to hear in his right ear. Even the insertion of an implant did not help; he had to struggle with balance problems. Recently, infections have repeatedly set him back.
But now it doesn’t seem to affect him anymore, and after his success he made a few rather bold statements, which in German Paralympic sport are more likely to be heard from long jumper Markus Rehm, who has been unbeaten throughout his career. “He aims to achieve the times of Olympic athletes. That is possible because he has no limitations other than his eyes,” said national coach Ute Schinkitz. And: “There is definitely still room for improvement.”
On Thursday, for example, he “messed up the turnaround a bit,” said Engel: “If it gets closer to one minute at some point, the whole thing won’t be far away.”
When asked if he really wanted to swim at the Olympic Games, he answered a little more cautiously. “If it should happen at some point,” he would be happy to do it, but it was not his focus. For now, he said, it was just fast times at the Paralympics. Alone at the top.