Beating his own expectations, Israeli athlete Matan Roditi came in fourth in the 10-kilometer swimming competition at the Tokyo Olympics Thursday.
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Out of the 26 competitors, the 22-year-old athlete expected to finish in the top eight. Surprising his Olympic team, Roditi finished the competition in 1:49:01.1, coming in fourth.
"It's an incredible accomplishment," he said in an interview after the competition. "My goal was to finish in the top eight. Throughout the race, I tried to save my energy and [being in front of the field] gave me the boost I needed at the finish."
To put Roditi's achievement into perspective, he beat two medalists from the 2016 Rio Olympics: Ferry Weertman from the Netherlands who won a gold medal in Rio and came in seventh this time, and France's Marc-Antoine Olivier, who won a bronze medal in 2016 and came in sixth in Tokyo.
Raditi crossed the finish line just 23.8 seconds shy of Italy's Gregorio Paltrinieri who won the bronze. Germany's Florian Wellbrock won the gold (1:48:33.7) and Hungary's Kristof Rasovszky the silver (1:48:59.0).
The young swimmer, who became the first Israeli to participate in the 10-kilometer open water marathon, admitted that he would still have to work hard to get a medal but said he was "optimistic for the next Olympics."
i24NEWS contributed to this report.
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