Streamlined News, Aug. 12, 2011

PHOENIX, Arizona, August 12. TOMORROW in London, 60 of the best open water swimmers in the world will stand at the shoreline of Hyde Park Lake for the official Olympic test event of the 10K swim. The top 10 finishers in the 10K swim at the recent world championships are automatically qualified to swim the 10k at the Olympics, and some of those swimmers arrived in London earlier this week to prepare for the test swim. All of the medalists from the 10K swim at the world championships will be swimming tomorrow, including men's champ Spyridon Gianniotis, silver medalist Thomas Lurz and bronze medalist Sergey Bolshakov. On the women's side, world champion Kerri-Anne Payne will surprisingly not be in the test event, though silver medalist Martina Grimaldi and third-place finisher Marianna Lymperta will be in attendance. Several others who placed in the top 10 are in London, including American Alex Meyer, who earned his automatic Olympic bid at worlds by finishing fourth.

Eva Fabian, Christine Jennings and Ashley Twichell are also attending the swim with Team USA. The American women have the opportunity to qualify one swimmer for the Olympic 10K swim, though that opportunity will not be until next June in Portugal.
The water temperature is much more agreeable to the swimmers, who took part in a practice at the venue yesterday. Coming in at 20 degrees Celsius, or 68 degrees Fahrenheit, the water is about 15 degrees cooler than what swimmers had to deal with in Shanghai last month.

We'll bring you the results of the test event swim on swimmingworld.com. And you can go to our open water channel and read John Dussliere's analysis of how both races will play out.

Lia Neal has been a swimmer we've been watching since she swam at the 2008 Olympic Trials as a 13-year-old. She's been progressing nicely through the years in the 50 freestyle, even making the championship final at last week's senior nationals. Last night at the junior nationals, she showed some endurance by winning the 200 free in a very fast 1:58.26, which would have placed second at nationals. It's the sixth-fastest time by an American this year, which includes the time trials done by Dagny Knutson and Jasmine Tosky at the world championships.

Tosky did not swim the 200 free last night, opting to compete in the 100 breaststroke, which she won in 1:10.24.

Click here to see Streamlined News in video.

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