Double medal winner Daniel Wiffen brought his Olympic Games to a close with an 18th place in the men’s Marathon 10km swim. The 800m freestyle gold medalist completed the course and afterwards compared the swim to a contact sport saying he would never do again.
“I’d say the start was pretty bad when I got punched in the face,” he said. “I got hit in the head three times, somebody kicked me in the stomach, I think I pulled my groin halfway through and, in terms of the last lap, I was just absolutely dead. That was the worst thing.”
The grueling race took place in the River Seine beside Pont Alexandre III bridge with Wiffen never in among the leading group after the beginning of the race.
The 31-man event took place over six laps of the course with six swimmers not finishing. The race makes Wiffen a dual sport Olympic athlete as the 10km event is officially a different discipline from swimming in the pool.
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“It’s the worst and best thing I’ve ever done in my life,” he said. “The reason why it was the worst is because it was the most painful thing I’ve ever done but, in terms of best, it’s because I’m happy to say I’m an Olympic open-water swimmer, dual-sport athlete, and a contact-sport athlete as well.”
The gold medal went to Hungarian Kristoff Rasovszky who covered the distance in 1:50:52.7 while Wiffen came in over six minutes behind in a time of 1:57:20.1.
It brings to an end an historical Paris Olympics for the 23-year-old who opened his games with the first swimming gold medal ever won by an Irish male swimmer and followed it up with a bronze medal in the 1,500m.
“I need to rewatch the finish,” he said. “I actually knew I was never in it from the start because you can see. I was just hoping not to come last to be honest by the end and I’m happy I didn’t.”
