A pair of 10-kilometer open water races at Miromar Lake in Florida marked the first step for Americans seeking to qualify for the Olympic Open Water race next summer. And with their top-two finishes today, Becca Mann, Haley Anderson, Jordan Wilimovsky, and Sean Ryan have each moved on to the next stage in Olympic qualifying.
Mann edged Anderson and Ashley Twichell for the women’s 10k national title in the morning race, touching the pads in 2:02:38.344, just a few tenths of a second ahead of Anderson (2:02:38.709), with Twichell finishing just a second further back (2:02:39.903). Mann and Anderson will each qualify for the World Championship team in the 10k, and they will swim the event this summer in Kazan.
Emily Brunemann, Eva Fabien, Tristian Baxter, Christine Jennings, and Stephanie Peacock completed the top eight in the event, all finishing the grueling race within 30 seconds of the winner.
On the men’s side, Wilimovsky pulled ahead on the final lap to take the national crown with a time of 1:54:27.928. He finished about 13 seconds clear of an epic race for the second spot on the World Championships team, as the battle between Ryan and Alex Meyer came down to six one-thousandths of a second − closer than any margin used to measure times in pool swimming.
After a photo finish, officials determined that Ryan edged Meyer, 1:54:40.334 to 1:54:40.340. Ryan thus joins Wilimovsky in the 10k race this summer in Russia. David Heron, Andrew Gemmell, Chip Peterson, Cameron Stitt, and Arthur Frayler were also among the top eight finishers.
Mann, Anderson, Wilimovsky, and Ryan will each compete in the 10k race at the World Championships this summer, hoping to finish in the top-ten, which would earn an automatic qualification for the Olympic 10k race. A second qualifier a year later will also be used for selection for Rio, but a country can only put two swimmers in the field of 25 if both finish in the top-ten at Worlds.
Meyer finished fourth in the World Championship race in 2011, booking his spot in the Olympic Games, where he took tenth. However, after his third place finish today, Meyer will not have the opportunity to return to the Olympics.
Anderson, meanwhile, will be gunning for her second-straight Games after she was the silver medalist in London in 2012, finishing less than a half second behind gold medalist Eva Risztov. Anderson qualified by way of the official selection event held in the summer of 2012 in Setubal, Portugal, after no American woman finished in the top-ten at the 2011 World Championships.
2015 USA Swimming Open Water Nationals, Full Results – Results