Sunday, September 20, 2009

Same Result, Different Continent For Okimoto And Lurz

Asia. Europe. North America. It does not matter where Thomas Lurz or Poliana Okimoto swim - they have been winning on every continent this year.

Thomas and Poliana won this week's leg of the FINA Marathon Swimming World Cup held in Chun An, China. The two superstars of professional marathon swimming will finish off their Asia tour next week in Shantou and then head to Dubai for the season-ending races.

Fran Crippen of the USA said after the race, "It was an extremely tough race, definitely one of the hardest 10K's, if not the hardest, of my career. The weather was very hot (95+˚F) and the water was 85+˚F. I wore a full body suit and ate a lot of gels and drank as much as I could but was still dead on the last 2.5K. There were seven of us that broke away and I was really struggling to keep the pace. I started to cramp and with about 800 meters to go, I was in seventh. I broke to the right of the group and started surging as best I could...and finished third. I am very happy that I was able to dig down and race hard."

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