Christian Hein (born 6 September 1982) is a German former swimmer, who specialized in long-distance freestyle events and open water marathon. He won two silver medals in both 5 and 10 km open water swimming at the
2003 FINA World Championships in
Barcelona, Spain, with a time of 53.13.9 and 1:51.06.5, respectively. Hein is a member of SVW 05 Würzburg, and is coached and trained by Nikolai Evseev.
Hein qualified for the
men's 400 m freestyle at the
2004 Summer Olympics in
Athens
Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates ...
, by finishing second behind his teammate
Heiko Hell from the Olympic trials, in an A-standard entry time of 3:51.53. Hein missed out a spot for the eight-man final, as he placed tenth out of 47 swimmers in the morning's preliminary heats, lowering his entry time to 3:49.66. In the
1500 m freestyle, Hein finished twelfth overall on the morning's preliminaries by exactly one second ahead of Japan's
Takeshi Matsuda
is a retired Japanese Olympic, Asian and National Record holding swimmer. He swam for Japan at the 2004, 2008 Olympics, 2012 Olympics, and 2016 Olympics, winning four medals. At the 2008 Olympics, he won a bronze medal in the men's 200 m bu ...
with a time of 15:15.42.
At the
2006 European Aquatics Championships in
Budapest, Hungary, Hein swept the two spots for Germany, as he placed second behind
Thomas Lurz by a single second margin in the men's 5 km open water race, clocking at 56:01.1. He also picked up a bronze medal in the 10 km race, but finished behind
Maarten van der Weijden of the Netherlands by approximately three seconds, in a time of 1:58:16.6.
References
External links
Profile – German Swimming Federation
1982 births
Living people
German male swimmers
Olympic swimmers for Germany
Swimmers at the 2004 Summer Olympics
Male long-distance swimmers
German male freestyle swimmers
World Aquatics Championships medalists in open water swimming
Sportspeople from Würzburg
20th-century German people
21st-century German people
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