PEOPLE
YOUNG SWIMMERS
At London 2012 the 10km marathon swim will come into the Olympic spotlight once again. The growth of interest in open
water swimming since the 2008 Beijing Olympics means the global atention the event receives second time around will be unprecedented. The FINA World Championships in Shanghai in July – where the 10km races also served as Olympic qualifiers – intensified speculation about possible medallists in London, not least in the UK, whose Keri-Anne Payne finished first in the women’s race. But the increased profile of the sport is also having an effect at
grassroots level, where it’s being taken up by growing numbers of young swimmers.
YOUNG
The question is, then, who will be the contenders in Rio 2016, and will the next generation of top-level open water swimmers break through even before then? There have already been some clear pointers to what the future holds. Last summer London hosted an invitational swim, to test the Olympic course on the Serpentine. The field included Greece’s Spyros Giannotis and Germany’s Thomas Lurz – who in the men’s 10km race in Shanghai finished first and second respectively. The winner, though (by 26 seconds) was a 21-year old Canadian swimmer, Richard Weinberger. “I don’t know if those athletes were excited about the race as he
was but I know a lot of them don’t like to lose,” says Weinberger’s coach, Ron Jacks, who atributes the result to both Weinberger’s use of a new full-body swimsuit and his affinity for cold water (the water temperature in Shanghai was a sweltering 32 degrees). Jacks adds that Weinberger’s 17th place in China was deceptively strong, since all the faster finishers were older. “The average age of the top ten was 27 or 28,” he says.
PRETENDERS
The growing popularity of open water swimming is reaching grassroots levels, and the Olympians of the future are already juggling training, studies and friends. Jonathan Knot talks to some of the sport’s brightest prospects.
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