Mate qualified for two swimming events at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, by clearing a FINA A-standard entry time of 2:13.21 (200 m breaststroke) from the European Championships in Eindhoven, Netherlands. In the 100 m breaststroke, Mate set an Austrian record mark of 1:00.93 to touch the wall first in heat 4 by two seconds ahead of Turkey's Demir Atasoy, but missed the semifinals by 0.21 seconds, as he placed eighteenth out of 65 swimmers on the first night of preliminaries. In his second event, 200 m breaststroke, Mate raced to third place and twenty-first overall on the same heat by 0.47 of a second behind New Zealand's Glenn Snyders, in his personal best of 2:11.56.