Germany’s Thomas Lurz fended off a tenacious challenge by American Chip Peterson on Sunday to win the men’s 5km open-water gold medal at the 11th World Swimming Championships.
Russia’s Larisa Ilchenko claimed the women’s 5km crown in the open-water course set up in Montreal’s 1976 Olympic rowing basin.
They were the first medals awarded as competition got under way on Sunday, with diving finals slated for the evening in the women’s 10m synchronised platform and men’s 3m synchronised springboard.
Lurz captured his gold in 51 minutes and 17,2 seconds, holding off the 17-year-old Peterson, whose silver medal time of 51:18,8 was just a 10th of a second in front of Italian bronze medallist Simone Ercoli’s 51:18,9.
”My tactic was to swim fast the last 500m,” Lurz said. ”Before that, I wanted to save my power. The last 300m was very hard. The second-place swimmer from America didn’t give up.”
Ilchenko is still only 16, but she came into the event having won the 5km title at Fina’s open-water world championships in Dubai last year.
She clocked 55 minutes and 40,1 seconds, with American Margy Keefe second in 55:44,3 and Dutch veteran Edith van Dijk, a four-time world championships gold medallist, taking bronze in 55:46,6.
”It’s a big surprise for me,” said Ilchenko, but Van Dijk said that after the youngster’s performance last year it didn’t come as a shock.
”Last year was a bigger surprise,” said the 31-year-old, who now owns 12 world championship medals and will compete in 10km and 25km in Montreal in her last world-title bids.
”She swam a very tactical, very smart race. The first 2,5km she stayed in the group, and in the last 800m she moved into the lead.”
Van Dijk said she prefers more wide open spaces for open-water swimming, with the added difficulties of surf and current.
The confines of the rowing basin meant there was a fair amount of bumping and barging at the turning buoys.
Keefe said that was her main reason for an early attack.
”I was getting killed on the buoys,” said the American, who trains in a pool and hadn’t actually swum an open-water race since 2002. ”I wanted to get away from other people.”
But Lurz was hopeful that the use of such venues might see open-water swimming added to the Olympic programme, since rowing venues would already have been built.
”I took part in the 1 500m freestyle in Athens,” he said of his experience in the Olympic competition pool. ”But I like open water. I hope it will be in the Olympics. I think it’s not a big problem to make it in the Olympics, because the rowing venue is already there. It’s perfect.”
As expected in the diving preliminaries, China dominated, with up-and-coming 15-year-old Jia Tong teaming with Yuan Pei Lin to lead the women’s 10m platform preliminaries with a total of 331,86 points.
Jia has sparkled on the grand-prix circuit this year, delivering two platform firsts and five synchro platform firsts with two different partners.
Australia’s 2004 Olympic diving gold medallist Chantelle Newbery and partner Loudy Tourky were second in the prelims, followed by Americans Cassandra Cardinell and Laura Ann Wilkinson.
Newbery and Tourky won 3m synchronised springboard bronze in Athens last year, and Newbery won 10m platform individual Olympic gold.
With only 12 pairs competing, none was eliminated in the preliminaries.
China’s Wang Feng and He Chong topped the preliminary points in the men’s 3m synchronised springboard. The duo have won five 3m synchronised grand-prix titles this year.
Americans Justin and Troy Dumais were second after the preliminaries, followed by Australians Steven Barnett and Robert Newbery — husband of Chantelle.
Preliminaries were also under way on Sunday in women’s water polo and the synchronised swimming duet event. — Sapa-AFP