Koch will be competing once again for the New York Breakers. “That feels really nice. I am really happy and I am really looking forward to the competition to start,” he said. “I hope I can do even better this year.”
He spoke highly about his team’s General Manager Tina Andrew. “She is really good. I really like being a part of her team. I am really looking forward to this next season,” he said.
For Koch, quarantine has been “okay” and he shared that he has done a lot of biking in Germany. “We didn’t have a pool for six weeks, so I did biking,” he said. “Initially, the pandemic was really hard, but now I go cycling and do other things besides swimming that made me better as a swimmer. You need to find the positives, that’s the silver lining for me, especially with the ISL and all the competitions coming up.”
Each day, he is motivated by the “fun” in the sport. “I have been swimming since 1998 but it is still so much fun for me to do it every day. I still enjoy it,” he said.
On being a swimmer in the digital age, he said, “The digital age is really good because it helps you with the small details and that will make a big difference in the elite level.”
He is drawn to the breaststroke since it’s “very individual.” “You have eight guys in the pool with eight different techniques so you have to find your own way of swimming. I really like it, especially since it allows me to try something new,” he said.
For young and aspiring swimmers, he said, “Get a nice group behind you or with you, that way you can have a lot of fun, and it can help in the tough days when it’s hard to stay motivated.” “Having fun is the most important part, that way, you can stick around forever, like me,” he said with a sweet laugh.
Koch noted that for recovery purposes, he uses ice baths, as well as physical therapy.
He acknowledged that it was the adverse times in his athletic career that helped define him. “It was mostly the things that didn’t go as planned, such as an injury in 2011, and then, I had to do a lot of things to get back to swimming and get better. I try to see the positives in those situation, that way, I can come back even stronger,” he explained.
Koch defined the word success as “being happy with everything going on for me.” “Being happy with the position that I am means success to me,” he explained.
For his fans, Koch concluded, “Thank you for supporting me and for sticking around for such a long time.”
To learn more about German swimmer Marco Koch, follow him on Instagram.
nybreakers @iswimleague and the @olympics #RoadToTokyo #HereToCreate #IAMReady #BuildingTheBreakers #streamlineposition #swimmerslife #swimmers video by @wellmann.media / @maikewellmann
