2024-03-07 13:19:16
“I held three starts in Tallinn, from which I have three medals, two world titles in the 200 and 450 m freestyle and a bronze medal in the 25 m butterfly,” Tsanko Tsankov, who became the world ice champion for the second time, said on Nova TV swimming championships in Tallinn, Estonia.
“I have achieved the goal I set for myself – two world titles in ice swimming for Bulgaria, so today we will cancel the remaining two disciplines that we have left in this championship, so that we can take a trip to the Finnish capital Helsinki, as I think we did our job perfectly”, Tsankov also stated.
According to him, the water temperature in the morning drops slightly below 0 degrees, and every morning the organizers clean a thick layer of ice that accumulates on the surface of the pool.
“Yesterday, when I won the world title in the 450m freestyle, the water temperature had risen to 1.7 degrees,” he says. Swimming in such conditions makes the body work in a completely different mode. The distance is as many as 18 lengths in the icy waters of the Baltic Sea.
He says that he had an extremely good training at Belmeken. According to him, one of the important things for an ice swimmer is to train in such conditions. Tsankov trains in the Black Sea, where the water temperature is 7 degrees. The other thing is mental toughness. “It’s important not to think about how cold it is and just get in and swim the distance,” he says.
He is about to leave for New Zealand, where he will participate in one of the most difficult club marathons in the world – the Hook Strait, the distance of which is more than 25 km at a water temperature of about 13 degrees. “I will have to spend between 5 and 6 hours there, this world championship is part of my preparation,” he also said.