Several open water swimmers swam extremely fast over the last few days in the Water Cube in Beijing. In addition to Cassandra Patten making the finals of the 800-meter freestyle, Britain's David Davies made the finals in the 1500-meter freestyle in an incredibly quick 14:46.11 in the most impressive preliminary 1500 heat in history.
English Channel record holder Petar Stoychev dropped his seed time seven seconds to do a very respectable 15:28.84. Greece's Spyridon Gianniotis did an even more respectable 14:53.32 that, unbelievably, was not fast enough to qualify for the finals.
Photo of Petar Stoychev winning the Olympic 10K Marathon Swim qualification race in Beijing. Photo by Pei Qingsheng.
1 comment:
1500 qualifier this year as just plain nuts. The person who finished 9'th would have won gold in most years and won a medal in every year except for 2004.
TWELVE guys under 15...that is just nuts. Was it in 1972 (Spitz era) where 16:0x won the bronze?
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