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| Personal information | |||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | David Karl Brandl | ||||||||||||||
| National team |  Austria | ||||||||||||||
| Born | 19 April 1987 Linz, Austria | ||||||||||||||
| Height | 1.86 m (6 ft 1 in) | ||||||||||||||
| Weight | 83 kg (183 lb) | ||||||||||||||
| Sport | |||||||||||||||
| Sport | Swimming | ||||||||||||||
| Strokes | Freestyle | ||||||||||||||
| Club | Perger SV[1] | ||||||||||||||
| Coach | Helge Gödecke[1] | ||||||||||||||
Medal record
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David Karl Brandl (born 19 April 1987) is an Austrian swimmer, who specialized in freestyle events.[1][2] He is a multiple-time Austrian champion, a four-time national record holder, and a current member of Perger Swimming Club (German: Perger Schwimmverein) in Perg. He also won a bronze medal, as a member of the Austrian swimming team, at the 2008 European Championships in Eindhoven, Netherlands.[3]
Brandl qualified for the men's 400 m freestyle at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, by attaining a B-standard entry time of 3:51.35 from the Austrian Swimming Championships, coincidentally in his home city Linz.[4] He won the second heat by twenty-one hundredths of a second (0.21) ahead of France's Sébastien Rouault, with an Austrian record-breaking time of 3:48.63. Brandl, however, failed to advance into the final, as he placed twentieth out of 37 swimmers in the evening preliminaries.[5] Three days later, Brandl swam on the second leg of the men's 4 × 200 m freestyle relay, recording his fastest individual-split time of 1:46.45. Brandl and his teammates Markus Rogan, Dominik Koll, and Florian Janistyn finished heat two in fifth place and ninth overall, for another Austrian record time of 7:11.45.[6]
At the 2009 FINA World Championships in Rome, Italy, Brandl set an Austrian record in the 400 m freestyle, lowering his time to 3:47.61. The following year, Brandl achieved a fifth-place finish in the same event at the 2010 European Short Course Swimming Championships in Eindhoven, Netherlands, posting his best career time of 3:44.33.[7]
At the 2011 FINA World Championships in Shanghai, China, Brandl competed in two long-distance freestyle events, but achieved a slightly fair swimming performance. He finished twenty-fifth in the 400 m freestyle, and twenty-second in the 800 m freestyle, posting his slowest possible time of 3:54.73 and 8:05.66, respectively.[8][9]
Four years after competing in his first Olympics, Brandl qualified for his second Austrian team, as a 25-year-old, at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, by attaining a B-standard time of 1:48.95 in the men's 200 m freestyle.[10] He challenged seven other competitors on the third heat of his only individual event, including Canada's Blake Worsley and Israel's Nimrod Shapira Bar-Or. He came only in fifth place by 0.68 of a second ahead of Tunisia's Ahmed Mathlouthi, with a time of 1:49.00. Brandl, however, failed to advance into the semifinals, as he placed twenty-seventh out of 41 swimmers in the morning's preliminary heats.[11] Two days later, Brandl reunited with his teammates Rogan, Janistyn, and Christian Scherübl for the men's 4 × 200 m freestyle relay. Swimming the lead-off leg, Brandl recorded a time of 1:49.80, and the Austrian team went on to finish heat two in eighth place and sixteenth overall, for a total time of 7:17.94.[12]
