Friday, August 15, 2008

Getting Ready in the Pool for the 10K

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:

Harriet said...

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?