Tiburon on TV on Thanksgiving

Comcast SportsNet Bay Area will broadcast the 2008 RCP Tiburon Mile four separate times in November and December.

The first broadcast of this annual event will be at 7 pm PT on Thursday, November 27, 2008. The other three broadcasts will be on Monday, December 1st at 6 pm PT, on Tuesday, December 9th at 6:30 pm PT and on Sunday, December 14th at 5 pm PT.

If your household gets the Comcast SportsNet Bay Area signal, do not miss this exciting open water swimming broadcast where Trent Grimsey of Australia took a gamble and surprised an amazing field of Olympic and world champions at the 9th annual RCP Tiburon Mile.

The broadcast will show how Grimsey swam all by himself, far to the left of the main pack, but still won by 14 seconds over Olympic 10K bronze medalist Thomas Lurz, multi-time world open water champion Vladimir Dyatchin of Russia, Brendan Capell of Australia and 2008 Olympic 1500-meter gold medalist Oussama Mellouli.

The Comcast broadcast (see below) will showcase 800+ other swimmers who ventured across the 1.2-mile channel from Angel Island to the City of Tiburon just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. Footage will capture how the lead pack with Lurz, Dyatchin, Capell and Mellouli were all jostling with each other, but they couldn’t chase down the lone Grimsey.

The women's race was equally compelling, but the lead women were much closer to one another. "I could see all my competitors and knew where they were," said world 25K open water champion Britta Kamrau. Kamrau reached the shoreline together with two-time world open water silver medalist Ekaterina Seliverstova of Russia. As they both ran up the beach, Kamrau was just a step ahead. “I am not good at running and I have never done a race where there is a run at the finish. I just put one step ahead of the other and beat [Seliverstova].”



Kirsten Groome of Louisiana and Luane Rowe of Sydney followed closely behind the top two women to take third and fourth respectively.

The top 25 overall swimmers are as follows:

1. Trent Grimsey in 20:31
2. Thomas Lurz in 20:45
3. Vladimir Dyatchin in 20:46
4. Brendan Capell in 20:47
5. Oussama Mellouli in 20:52
6. Andrew Beato in 21:14
7. Charles Cullom in 21:16
8. John K. Koehler in 21:37
9. Charles Peterson in 21:44
10. Aljaz Ojstersek in 21:46
11. Britt Kamrau in 21:48 [first woman]
12. Ekaterina Seliverstova in 21:49 [second woman]
13. Kirsten Groome in 21:54 [third woman]
14. Luane Rowe in 21:57 [fourth woman]
15. Alex Kostich in 21:59
16. Eva Fabian in 22:00 [fifth woman]
17. Dawn Heckman in 22:00 [sixth woman]
18. Chloe Sutton in 22:01 [seventh woman]
19. Noa Sakamoto in 22:09
20. Charlie Rimkus in 22:09
21. Steffan Troxel in 22:10
22. Sergiy Fesenko in 22:30
23. Angela Duckworth in 22:34
24. Erik Vendt in 22:37
25. John Flanagan in 22:39

Bob Placak is the founder of the RCP Tiburon Mile and a nominee for the 2008 World Open Water Swimming Man of the Year.

Photo copyright by Elliott. Used by permission. Photo shows the different colored caps of the elite swimmers.