Streamlined News, July 19, 2011

PHOENIX, Arizona, July 19. KERI-ANNE Payne won the women's 10K open water race off the coast of China today, regaining the world championship title she won in 2009. What was just as important was gaining automatic selection to participate in the 10K swim next year at the London Olympics. Payne is the first British athlete to be named to the Olympic team in any sport, so I'm sure she'll get plenty of recognition for that when she returns home. But first she'll have the 1500 freestyle and 800 free relay in the pool competition next week.

The second through tenth place finishers in the 10K swim also were selected to compete in the Olympics. Those swimmers are 2010 world champion Martina Grimaldi of Italy, Greece's Marianna Lymperta, Australia's Melissa Gorman, Argentina's Cecilia Biagioli, Brazil's Poliana Okimoto, Czech's Jana Pechanova, Germany's Angela Maurer, Switzerland's Swann Oberson and Spain's Erika Villaecija Garcia. Fifteen more spots remain to be filled for the Olympic 10K, and they will be chosen at a qualifying meet next June in Portugal. The United States will get the opportunity to add one or two swimmers at that meet, since Christine Jennings and Eva Fabian finished 13th and 30th, respectively, in today's race.

The men's 10K starts at 9 a.m. tomorrow, with world champ Thomas Lurz and Americans Alex Meyer and Sean Ryan among the participants lining up for the race.

Over in the diving venue, China continues to dominate, winning the gold medal in the women's 1-meter individual event and the men's three-meter synchro to go six-for-six in diving events. With the 1-meter not an Olympic event, China does not put much focus on it, but the host country still managed a 1-2 finish, with Shi Tingmao taking gold and Wang Han getting silver. Tania Cagnatto of Italy won the bronze, despite suffering injuries in a car accident only six weeks ago.

In the men's three-meter synchro, Qin Kai and Luo Yutong had little challenge from the competition, winning the gold by12 points over Russia's Ilya Zakharov and Evgeny Kuznetsov. Mexico's Yahel Castillo and Julian Sanchez won bronze and the American duo of Kristian Ipsen and Troy Dumais took fourth after they faltered badly on their final dive and fell from second to fourth.

In water polo, the American women continue to look strong on their way to repeating as world champions. They trounced the Hungarians 16-7 to make up for tying the Dutch in their opening match. But that wasn't the biggest margin of victory today. How about a 22-6 win for Canada over Uzbekistan and an 18-2 shellacking by Italy over South Africa?

Russia, China and Spain have a stranglehold on the medals in synchronized swimming, and Natalia Ishchenko is primed to be, once again, the darling of the competition. Ishchenko didn't compete in the team technical routine final won by Russia, but she will be part of the team free routine final tomorrow. Though Russia appears to be so dominant in all aspects of synchronized swimming, this would be the first free team routine gold medal for Russia at the world championships, and it could be Ishchenko's third gold of the meet.

As always, we have lots of recaps for you on each sport's respective news channels at swimmingworld.com. And be sure to go to swimmingworld.tv for video interviews with members of the Canadian diving, water polo and synchronized swimming teams. Our video coverage of worlds will be bumped up dramatically when pool swimming begins Sunday. Swimming World Magazine senior writer John Lohn will be in Shanghai getting video interviews with some of the top swimmers there.

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