1978 – BERLIN

After South America, the world aquatics came back to Europe, but the United States still dominated during the World Championships.

Participants of the World Championships grew with more than 140 athletes after Cali 1975, 828 athletes got accreditation to the 3rd FINA World Championships. The team of East Germany was very successful at the two previous events, so they might haven’t been happy to see that West Germany organised the third World Championships.

18 competitions for men and 19 for women were held in West Berlin like before and the schedule was also the same at the coming world championships in Ecuador.

Third WC wasn’t as successful for German athletes – altogether – as before. They collected only two gold medals: one for West, one for East Germany which is much less than the collection from Cali (11 gold medals) or from Belgrade (13 gold medals).

The dominant nation became the Unites States, because they won 23 gold, 14 silver and 7 bronze medals. This wonderful statistic resulted the first position on the medal rankings of course. The Soviet Union was the second-best nation (6-4-6), Canada got the third place (3-1-5). The Hungarian team only came up with three medals (two in swimming, one in water polo).

The United States won 11 gold medals of 15, but there were some great figures in this event beside them. For example, Vladimir Salnikov from Soviet Union. His nickname was „tzar of the pool” or „Leningrad Express”, not by accident. He won 400m and 1500m freestyle, and now he is a member of the FINA Bureau.

Graham Smith from Canada won 200m individual medley and got silver medal in 100m breaststroke so he also could be proud of himself. Hungarian swimmers reached only two medals in the swimming competition. World champions of Cali (Zoltán Verrasztó and András Hargitay) won bronze medals (200m backstroke and 400m individual medley).

The East German Dominance of the women competition has ended in West Berlin (Barbara Krause won the only gold medals, but she got three silver medals), the athletes of United States became the new stars in Germany (9 gold medals included the three relay event). Beside them Australian Tracey Wickham achieved a nice result, she won 400m and 800m freestyle.

The biggest star of this event was Tracy Caulkins (United States) with 5 gold (200m butterfly, 200m, 400m individual medley, 4x100m medley relay) and one silver medal.

One of the biggest super star of all time in the history of diving, Greg Louganis claimed his first world title this year (10metre). Two years earlier he got the second place at Montreal Olympic Games behind the Italian giant, Dibiasi. Louganis then won the 3 and 10metre gold in the next two WC and became four times Olympic champion.

Phil Boggs (who died very young in 1990) from United States got the gold medal in 3 metre while in the women competition Irina Kalinina become the champion in both events.

In synchro, gold medals went to Canada in solo and in duet, but the United States won the team competition. Beside these two nations, Japan reached the podium in all three competitions.

The Hungarian Olympic champion team of Montreal 1976 was not able to win the gold medal in West Berlin, Italy got it. The two favourite teams played draw against each other and beside this 4-4, two other draws were played by both teams, so the goal differences decided the final standings. Yugoslavia was the bronze medallist of this World Championships.