Germany celebrated twice on Saturday morning as Lea Boy and Oliver Klemet timed their races perfectly to come out on top in the 3km knockout sprints at the World Aquatics Open Water Swimming World Cup in Ibiza.
It was the debut of a new event - three rounds of tournament style swims with 46 women racing 1500 meters, with the top 20 racing 1000m, before the final ten going all out for the last 500 meters.
Germany’s Lea Boy was hardly a factor in the first two swims, biding her time perfectly to come out on top in the final 500m by three seconds at 5:18.50. Boy, age 25, was fourth in the first heat and seventh in the semi–final. With the final outcome determined by the final swim, one doesn’t need to go for time in the first two rounds, just needing to do enough to advance to the next round.
Boy did that perfectly as she won the first ever 3k knockout race contested at the World Aquatics Open Water Swimming World Cup.
“The race gets faster with each round – it’s a nice new competition,” Boy said. “In the first round, I swam without my legs so that I could swim in the last 500 all out from the beginning to the end.”
Hungary’s Bettina Fabian won the silver medal at 5:22.10, just getting over the top of Japan’s Ichika Kajimoto (5:22.20).
Fabian also bided her time perfectly, finishing sixth in the first heat and fourth in the semi-finals.
"Honestly, I was expecting it to be a little less intense,” Fabian said. “It was really hard to recover after the first 1500 meters, and the first 200 meters of the next 1000 felt really, really painful. But after the 1K, it actually felt good to jump back into the water for the final 500. I wasn’t really fast by then, but I just need to train a bit differently for this competition and it’ll be good, yeah."
With a limited amount of time in between swims, recovery was key and the swimmers figured out as they went how best to handle it.
“In the pool, we just have to practice this—like swim a 1500, rest a bit, then swim a 1000, then rest again,” Fabian said. “So basically, we need to practice that kind of session once a week.
"I think we need to practice swimming the 1500, then resting a bit on dry land, and learning how to recover even faster. And basically, we have to work on gaining more speed for the final 500 meters, so we can really fight for the podium at a World Championships, for example."
“Tactics? No, it was the first time. Nobody knew how it would go,” Boy said.
Boy and Fabian both have a strong pool background—Boy’s 1500m lifetime best is 16:15, while Fabian's is 16:29, which played in their favor in the final round.
Japan’s Kajimoto won the bronze at age 21 as the top three distanced themselves from the chase pack - Germany’s Jeannette Spiwoks (5:29.70) finished fourth, almost eight seconds back from the medals.
“The race was exhilarating, and my first time competing in this type of race,” Kajimoto said. “I’m just so, so happy with my performance today.
“My practice has been focused solely on the 10km, so I’m glad this preparation went so well for the knockout sprint.”
Italy’s Ginevra Taddeucci, who was the Olympic bronze medalist in the 10K last summer, finished off the podium in fifth after looking like the woman to beat in finishing second in the first heat and winning the semi-finals.
Taddeucci (5:32.00) couldn’t hang with the speed of the leaders as she finished ahead of France’s Clemence Coccordano (5:32.40) and Spain’s Paula Otero Fernandez (5:33.70).
Yesterday’s 10K champion Angela Martinez Guillen (5:33.80) of Spain finished eighth ahead of Italy’s Giulia Gabbrielleschi (5:35.20) and Antonietta Cesarano (5:36.90).
In the men’s race, Germany’s Oliver Klemet used his short speed to come out on top in round three but the difference was Klemet set the pace in the first two rounds, touching the wall first before unleashing his final kick to win the gold medal at 4:50.50 in the final 500m.
“I came into this race really thinking about tactics,” Klemet said. “I wanted to win all the races today. I think I handled this well throughout all the rounds, getting out front and making everyone catch me.”
Klemet comes from a rich pool background, where he was seventh in the 400m freestyle in Paris and has a 1500m best time of 14:45.
"I think it really helped, especially over the 500 meters,” Klemet said of his pool speed. “Winning the first turn was the key, and from there, because I’m a little bit faster than most of the others, I could stay in front and control the race."
Klemet was joined each time by Hungary’s David Betlehem, who won silver in the end at 4:51.60, as the Olympic bronze medalist was on Klemet’s heat each time they raced. Betlehem was fourth in Paris in the 1500m and has a lifetime best of 14:40.
"Yeah, it was a new kind of race and I was really excited about it,” Betlehem said. “We had a plan with Oliver Klemet — I would lead the 1500, and then I knew he would be really fast over the 1000 and the 500. So we were always one-two in the race.
“The idea was that if I was second, I could get a good push underwater and go straight to the right position, so nobody could get ahead of me. That way, Oliver would have room to go, and I could just follow on his left side, by his legs.
“It worked — we were one-two the whole way. At the finish, I tried to sprint against him, but today he was faster than me. I'm happy with my silver medal."
The men’s swimmers learned from watching the women compete earlier that speed early in the swims was important.
“I saw in the women’s race that Lea Boy was first to the first buoy and she went on to win the final,” Klemet said. “Being first means everyone else is behind you, fighting each other, while you can take the turn clean without any battles and keep the speed up. That makes a huge difference, especially in such a short and fast race like the last 500m final."
France’s Marc-Antoine Olivier (4:53.50) won the bronze medal at age 28, kicking away from the Olympic champion Kristof Rasovszky (4:57.00) of Hungary.
Olivier is one of the most experienced open water swimmers in the world, having first competed at the World Championships in 2015, so it’s no surprise he found his way on to a podium in a new race.
“Yeah, it's a very tactical race, because you need to push every session,” Olivier said. “But now I'm thrilled to finish, because I'm not too young. So, for the first knockout, I'm very happy.
“I will race the knockout sprint at the upcoming European Championships and maybe in the World Cup in Setubal. So, between then and now, we need to find a new tactic for, I hope, a win in Singapore.”
Rasovszky could not keep up with the speed of his rivals, as this was his first international open water competition of 2025 after he was eighth in the 10km yesterday.
"It’s quite hard,” Rasovszky said of the 3k knockout sprints. “You can’t really know what to expect, but it was interesting. After the first 1500m, I thought, 'Okay, it’s not that hard.' But after that, the 1000m was definitely not easy, because everyone was pushing really hard, and you had to be in the top 10, and all these guys are really good in the pool as well. So it was quite tough.
“But after that, the 500 is really just a sprint, and I like that.”
Italy had a strong presence in the all-European final despite no medals, placing Matteo Diodato (fifth), Davide Marchello (seventh), and Andrea Filadelli (tenth) in the final.
France also had three finalists with Olivier, Logan Fontaine (sixth) and Sacha Velly (ninth) in the final.
Hungary’s Hunor Kovacs-Seres was the third Hungarian in the field, finishing eighth overall.
The water temperature was reported to be at 19.2 degrees Celsius at race time.
The World Aquatics Open Water Swimming World Cup will continue June 14 & 15 in Setubal, Portugal before the World Aquatics Championships in Singapore in July. The 3km knockout sprints will also be swum at this summer’s World Championships for the first time.