Johannes Liebmann produced one of the swims of the year on Saturday, shattering the men's 1500m freestyle world record at the European Aquatics Championships in Paris to become the first man in history to go under 14 minutes 30 seconds for the distance.

The 19-year-old German touched in 14:26.79, slicing 3.88 seconds off the previous world mark of 14:30.67 set by American Bobby Finke when he won Olympic gold in the event at the Paris Games two years ago.

Liebmann led from the opening lengths, briefly pressed by Hungary's Zalán Sárkány before pulling clear over the middle of the race. He closed with a final 100 metres of 56.18 seconds, splitting 28.79 and 27.39 to power away from the field in the closing strokes.

Sárkány took silver, 12.66 seconds adrift, with Germany's Oliver Klemet claiming bronze — a German 1-3 either side of the Hungarian on the podium.

It is a genuinely historic moment for the sport: the last time the men's 1500m freestyle world record fell at a European Championships was in 1927, when Sweden's Arne Borg set the mark.

The world record capped a remarkable weekend for Liebmann, who arrived at the Saint-Denis pool already the new European champion over 800m freestyle after winning that final in a European record of 7:37.59 — shaving 0.35 seconds off the mark he had set himself in Stockholm in April. He was the first German to win that title since it was added to the championship programme in Eindhoven in 2008.

The double gold underlines Germany's rise as a distance-swimming power, built around the training group at SC Magdeburg that has produced a string of European-record holders in the men's freestyle events over the past two years.

The record swim came in the pool built for the Paris 2024 Olympics at the Saint-Denis aquatics centre, now hosting its first major long-course championships since the Games and serving as the primary venue for the 2026 European Aquatics Championships.

Finke's mark had stood for barely two years, one of several Olympic swimming records now under threat as a new generation of distance swimmers targets the deep end of the record book. Liebmann's time leaves him as the outright benchmark in an event where sub-14:30 swimming had, until Saturday, never been done.