Swimming Canada Adds Open Water Swimmers to World Championships Team

OTTAWA, Canada, June 22. SWIMMING Canada announced today the addition of 6 swimmers to its FINA World Championships Team that will compete in Shanghai this summer. These six veteran athletes will represent Canada in the Open-Water events (5, 10 and 25km).

Richard Weinberger and Aimeson King of Victoria were the top 2 qualifiers in the men's 10km while Zsofia Balazs of Toronto and Nadine Williams of Sherwood Park, Alta, placed first and second respectively during last week's Canadian World Open Water Trials in Fort Myers, Florida, earning them a place on Canada's Worlds Team.

All four athletes will compete in the 5 and 10km as well as the new team event.

Simon Tobin of Quebec City and Xavier Desharnais of Lasalle were also added to the mix to compete in the 25km event.

"It's really exciting to see our top open water swimmers fight for a spot on the team in close races like we saw last week in Fort Myers," said Pierre Lafontaine, CEO and National Coach for Swimming Canada.

"Our open-water swimmers are becoming more and more competitive on the international scene and that bodes well for London 2012."

"Canada has the greatest numbers of International Open Water events as part of the FINA circuit, and exposing more of our athletes to high levels of competition will create more depth in our program," added Lafontaine.

The FINA World Championships Open water events will be held on July 19th (10K), 20th (Team), 22nd (5K) and 23rd (25K) in Shanghai.

Open Water Team roster
Zsofia Balazs, 20, Toronto, Toronto Swim Club, John Rodgers
Nadine Williams, 17, Sherwood Park, Alta., Silver Tide Swim Club, Chris Nelson
Richard Weinberger, 21, Victoria, BC, Pacific Coast Swimming, Ron Jacks
Aimeson King, 20, Victoria, BC, Island Swimming, Aaron Dahl
Simon Tobin, 26, Quebec City, Rouge et Or, Emmanuel Verge
Xavier Desharnais, 21, Montreal, QC, Club de Natation CALAC Lasalle, Mohamed Marouf

Ron Jacks, Victoria, BC, coach
Chris Nelson, Sherwood Park, Alta., coach

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