I particularly remember two moments from Tokyo.

Immediately after the ten-kilometer open water race, I sat crying on the bench with my team-mate Rob Muffels.

We had the season behind us.

I was an Olympic champion.

I had fulfilled a childhood dream.

And he screwed up his race a bit.

Rob was eleventh and I had won by a relatively large margin.

I had already done the first interviews when he crossed the finish line. A quarter of an hour later, we met again for the first time in the area where we could change and warm up before the race, on a bench that was standing there. At that moment it was a bit too much for both of us. We were overwhelmed by our feelings. We didn't speak at all, we both just howled like castle dogs. It was actually that too.

But this situation has become so ingrained that I will never forget it.

In the evening we talked directly about the situation again.

To process that.

It's important to talk to a few good friends about your feelings.

It sounds so dramatic when I say that we have worked it out, but of course I wanted to know what was going on with him emotionally and what was going through his head.

That's why we talked about it directly.

And of course, I won't forget the award ceremony either.

I say yes: a childhood dream - even if I certainly didn't say when I was 14 or 15 years old, I'm Florian Wellbrock, I'll be an Olympic champion.

Recorded by Christoph Becker.