The men's 10 km competition at the 2025 World Aquatics Championships was held on 16 July 2025. Going into the event, the top contenders were Kristóf Rasovszky, Dávid Betlehem, Oliver Klemet, Florian Wellbrock, Gregorio Paltrinieri and Marc-Antoine Olivier. The event was postponed from the morning of 16 July to 13:00 SGT on the same day due to water quality issues.
The race consisted of six laps off the coast of Palawan Beach, Sentosa, Singapore. The water was warm, and several swimmers retired from the race for medical reasons.
Hungary's Kristóf Rasovszky and Germany's Florian Wellbrock led during the first two laps, before Wellbrock led through most of the third and fourth laps. During the fifth lap, a leading group consisting of Wellbrock, Germany's Klemet, Italy's Paltrinieri and Australia's Kyle Lee broke away from the rest of the field. During the final 400 metres, Wellbrock maintained a lead of a few seconds, Paltrinieri held second, and Lee and Klemet raced for bronze. Wellbrock won with a time of 1:59:55.5, Paltrinieri came second with 1:59:59.2, and Lee finished third with 2:00:10.3, hundredths of a second ahead of Klemet, who finished fourth.
The win gave Wellbrock his seventh world title in open water swimming and his eighth world title in swimming in general. It was Paltrinieri's 17th World Championships medal, and it was Lee's first individual medal at an international event.
Background Hungary's Kristóf Rasovszky, the silver medallist at the 2020 Olympics and gold medallist at the 2024 Olympics, was competing after winning gold at the 2025 European Open Water Swimming Championships. His compatriot Dávid Betlehem, also a 2024 Olympic medallist, had collected multiple 5 km podium finishes in 2025. Germany's Oliver Klemet, the 2024 Olympic bronze medallist, had swum fast pool times complementing his 2025 Open Water Swimming World Cup podium finish. Germany's Florian Wellbrock, Olympic champion in 2020 and world champion in 2019 and 2023, and Italy's Gregorio Paltrinieri, the 2022 world champion, were also competing. France's Marc-Antoine Olivier, the 2025 World Cup points leader, was also in contention.
Each World Aquatics member federation could enter up to two athletes in this event.
Postponement The race was originally scheduled to take place on the morning of 16 July 2025, but water samples taken on 15 July showed that the amount of E. coli bacteria was above acceptable levels, so the race was postponed from 07:30 to 13:00 SGT on 16 July. In the early hours of 16 July, after the test results had shown more improvements and the E. coli amounts were within acceptable levels, World Aquatics confirmed the race would go ahead at the rescheduled time.
Race The race consisted of six laps off the coast of Palawan Beach, Sentosa. It was held at 13:00 SGT, making it the first medal-awarding event of the Championships.
Hungary's Kristóf Rasovszky and Dávid Betlehem led for the first 10 minutes before Germany's Florian Wellbrock took the lead. Rasovszky retook the lead when Wellbrock removed water from his goggles, but Wellbrock overtook Rasovszky at the first turn of the second lap to lead the race. Wellbrock maintained the lead through the third lap. Halfway through lap four, the order from the front was Wellbrock, Neutral Athlete Denis Adeev, Rasovszky, Betlehem, Germany's Oliver Klemet, France's Marc-Antoine Olivier, Italy's Gregorio Paltrinieri, and then Australia's Nicholas Sloman.
During the fifth lap, Klemet moved alongside Wellbrock, while Lee and Paltrinieri joined them to form a leading group of four which broke away from the rest of the field. During the final 400 metres, Wellbrock maintained a lead of a few seconds, Paltrinieri held second, and Lee and Klemet raced for bronze. Wellbrock won with a time of 1:59:55.5, Paltrinieri came second with 1:59:59.2, and Lee finished third with 2:00:10.3, hundredths of a second ahead of Klemet, who finished fourth.
The win gave Wellbrock his seventh world title in open water swimming and his eighth world title overall in swimming. It was also his third time winning this specific event at the World Championships. It was Paltrinieri's 17th World Championships medal, and it was Lee's first individual medal at an international event.
After the race, Wellbrock commented on the final sprint: "It's so dangerous when they're so close, especially Greg—he always has such a great finish. I was really nervous and tried to push all the time." Paltrinieri said, "I tried to catch Flo [Wellbrock], but he was swimming really fast." Lee, surprised at having won a medal, called his performance an "utter shock".
Paltrinieri commented on the water feeling like a "40-degree washing machine", and Wellbrock noted that he felt his high volume of warm water training was the "key" to him winning gold. Marc-Antoine Olivier had to be rescued by a lifeguard in the final kilometre of the race, and several other swimmers retired during the race for medical attention. CNA reported on the hot conditions of the race.
+ Results Rank Swimmer Nationality Time Florian Wellbrock 1:59:55.5 Gregorio Paltrinieri 1:59:59.2 Kyle Lee 2:00:10.3 4 Oliver Klemet 2:00:10.4 5 Luca Karl 2:00:30.4 6 Denis Adeev Neutral Athletes B 2:00:35.8 7 Andrea Filadelli 2:00:43.7 8 Nicholas Sloman 2:01:01.9 9 Dávid Betlehem 2:01:13.8 10 Christian Schreiber 2:01:39.5 11 Kaito Tsujimori 2:01:47.9 12 Joey Tepper 2:01:53.8 13 Kristóf Rasovszky 2:03:05.5 14 Athanasios Kynigakis 2:03:05.6 15 Esteban Enderica 2:03:06.1 16 Cho Cheng-chi 2:03:08.9 17 Diogo Cardoso 2:03:17.9 18 Martin Straka 2:03:29.0 19 Paul Niederberger 2:03:29.5 20 Luiz Loureiro 2:03:34.2 21 Eric Brown 2:04:04.6 22 Dylan Gravley 2:04:17.9 23 David Farinango 2:04:18.1 24 Ruan Breytenbach 2:05:07.6 25 Hector Pardoe 2:05:38.0 26 Jules Wallart 2:05:46.9 27 Piotr Woźniak 2:07:18.8 28 Matheus Melecchi 2:07:28.2 29 Yonatan Ahdut 2:07:47.3 30 Lev Cherepanov 2:07:47.5 31 Logan Vanhuys 2:07:52.7 32 Joaquín Moreno 2:08:27.5 33 Su Bo-ling 2:08:39.5 34 Riku Takaki 2:09:18.8 35 Vladislav Utrobin Neutral Athletes B 2:09:27.7 36 Connor Buck 2:09:37.1 37 Lan Tianchen 2:10:11.3 38 Zhang Jinhou 2:11:06.9 39 Diego Dulieu 2:11:07.1 40 Bartosz Kapała 2:11:32.1 41 Oh Se-beom 2:11:33.9 42 Tiago Campos 2:11:38.5 43 Artyom Lukasevits 2:11:41.4 44 José Barrios 2:11:41.8 45 Ratthawit Thammananthachote 2:11:51.8 46 Diego Obele 2:11:52.6 47 Nico Esslinger 2:11:53.4 48 Keith Sin 2:12:31.8 49 Jeison Rojas 2:12:42.9 50 Esteban Faure 2:16:05.3 51 Jakub Gabriel 2:17:20.4 52 Alan González 2:17:34.0 53 Tomáš Pavelka 2:17:48.7 54 Jamarr Bruno 2:19:19.8 55 Aflah Fadlan Prawira 2:19:35.0 56 Anurag Singh 2:20:53.1 57 Adrián Ywanaga 2:21:45.1 58 Juan Núñez 2:21:58.4 59 Army Pal 2:23:32.9 60 Nithikorn Jeampiriyakul 2:26:06.8 61 Chan Tsun Hin 2:26:43.6 62 Gafar Hassan 2:28:03.9 Joaquín Estigarribia Adam Ahmed Santiago Castedo Dilanka Shehan Tharusha Perera Marc-Antoine Olivier Matan Roditi Park Jae-hun Ritchie Oh Alejandro Plaza Ronaldo Zambrano Diego Vera Alexander Adrian Théo Druenne Samir Bachelani Oscar García Rami Rahmouni Juan Morales Swaleh Talib
Further information
– Report on the hot conditions of the race, including interviews with various swimmers – Video of the finish
References