Christian's Story
At Beijing 2008, Christian Sprenger swam in the preliminaries of the 100 and 200 metres breaststroke events. He also swam in the heat of the medley relay with Ashley Delaney, Adam Pine and Matt Targett before Hayden Stoeckel, Brenton Rickard, Andrew Lauterstein and Eamon Sullivan collected the silver medal, behind the Americans, in the final.
At the 2009 World Championships Sprenger broke the 200m world record in the semi-final and then placed third in the final. He also won bronze at the 2009 and 2011 World Championships for the medley relay. He decided to drop the 200m from his program and concentrate on the 100m for the London Olympics with great success.
Sprenger won his first individual Olympic medal at the London 2012 Games when he won silver in the 100m breaststroke. In a strong field that also featured teammate Brenton Rickard and defending Olympic Champion Kosuke Kitajima, Sprenger did his best to wear down Cameron van der Burgh in the final 50m but the South African was too strong as he won gold and set a new world record.
Sprenger’s performance saw him line up in the final of the 4 x 100m medley relay alongside Hayden Stoeckel, Matt Targett and James Magnussen. The team finished 2.23 seconds behind the USA and only 0.32 seconds behind the Japanese as they took home the bronze medal.
