Magdeburg, Germany has emerged as the open water training capital of the world. In addition to the defending Olympic champion in the men’s 10km Florian Wellbrock, the city is also the training ground of both Sharon van Rouwendaal of the Netherlands and Moesha Johnson of Australia, who won gold and silver on Thursday morning in the Seine in the women’s Olympic marathon swim.
The trio are all coached by Bernd Berkhahn.
Van Rouwendaal’s win was not a surprise, as she has proven herself as the world’s best female open water swimmer: she won silver in 2021 in Tokyo and gold in 2016 in Rio.
Johnson, on the other hand, was a revelation of the race in the Seine. She didn’t even make the team in the 10km race for Australia at last year’s World Championships. Australia has not had the same success in open water as they have in the pool, though that’s been changing in recent years, including Chelsea Gubecka earning silver in the 10k at Worlds last year.
Johnson moved to Germany last year, which beside allowing her to train with the best male and female open water swimmers in the world, unlocked access to a lot more racing opportunities in the active European Open Water Cup and World Aquatics Marathon Swim World Series.
Magdeburg doesn’t have a ton of open water swimming opportunities. It sits on the Elbe River, which is legal to swim in but until recent decades was one of the world’s most-polluted rivers and has had both a major cleanup and a PR campaign to restore its image.
But the 53-year-old Berkhahn has a bit of a magic touch in the distance. The training center, a federal base for the German Swimming Federation, includes swimmers like former World Record holder Sarah Kohler, Olympic 1500m bronze medalist Isabel Gose, and Olympic 400m champion Lukas Maertens.
Cool I just swam in the Elbe two hours ago. It’s tough swimming upstream. Riding the waves of the steamboats though… priceless