More details and photos to follow within 24 hours, but here is a quick summary of the 2008 USA Swimming Open Water National Championships.Fran Crippen of Mission Viejo Nadadores won in 1:58:41 over Deni Cullom, also of Mission Viejo, and Josef Kinderwater of WSY Swimming, in an extremely close race.
Kirsten Groome of First Colony Swim Team won comfortably in 2:03:25 over Eva Fabian of Greenwood Memorial Swim Club and Christine Jennings of Minnesota Aquatics.
The race was held in a beautiful park in Minneapolis' Lake Harriett. The course was a 4 loops of 2.5K. Rowing course lines were brought in with intermediate buoys every 10 meters under nearly ideal conditions.
More later.
Photo of Fran Crippen provided by TYR.
Copyright © 2008 by World Open Water Swimming Association
3 comments:
It doesn't blow my mind. Having a race after the best pool swimmers left behind from the Olympics have competed at the US Open all week and the younguns are about to compete at Juniors is silly. Turn out was very low plus the real media players are in Beijing. Who wants to swim a 10k after a tough week of competing or before a week of shorter events where your muscles need to be rested. Bad timing.
I agree with you, Steve. It's almost as if it never happened! I haven't been able to find a recap or results anywhere. Thanks for the mention. I hope you can track down some more information.
I'm not sure why, but the morning of the race, USA Swimming pulled the roster that was previously posted. And they have also pulled all historical open water results from the site!?
The timing I would think is to try to get more pool swimmers involved. If you bring the event to them, maybe they'll give it a shot! It's beneficial to the more novice and harder for those elite few who need to make choices as to what to concentrate on.
from the author of the first post--good point! Another way to look at it. I love open water and I see it growing from one race in a LSC in a season to many races and many new people trying it. I just know that the reason some of the kids on our teams aren't trying it is for those reasons--too tired or too afraid it could hurt performance in the 800 and other shorter events at juniors. Timing these events just right is very difficult. But don't be discouraged open water swimming is growing faster than we could have ever imagined. Chloe at 16, Mark at 28? Kirsten, Micha, Fran, Chip, Chad, and Even young Eva. Wow! All ages all levels of pool swimming. It is an amazing sport! Thank you Steve for everything you give it.
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