Christian Hein (born 6 September 1982) is a German former swimmer, who specialized in long-distance freestyle events and open water marathon.[2] He won two silver medals in both 5 and 10 km open water swimming at the 2003 FINA World Championships in Barcelona, Spain, with a time of 53.13.9 and 1:51.06.5, respectively.[3][4] Hein is a member of SVW 05 Würzburg, and is coached and trained by Nikolai Evseev.[1]
Hein qualified for the men's 400 m freestyle at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, by finishing second behind his teammate Heiko Hell from the Olympic trials, in an A-standard entry time of 3:51.53.[5][6] Hein missed out a spot for the eight-man final, as he placed tenth out of 47 swimmers in the morning's preliminary heats, lowering his entry time to 3:49.66.[7] In the 1500 m freestyle, Hein finished twelfth overall on the morning's preliminaries by exactly one second ahead of Japan's Takeshi Matsuda with a time of 15:15.42.[8]
At the 2006 European Aquatics Championships in Budapest, Hungary, Hein swept the two spots for Germany, as he placed second behind Thomas Lurz by a single second margin in the men's 5 km open water race, clocking at 56:01.1. He also picked up a bronze medal in the 10 km race, but finished behind Maarten van der Weijden of the Netherlands by approximately three seconds, in a time of 1:58:16.6.[9][10]
