PHOENIX, Arizona, November 25. IN the next installment of our award announcement series, Swimming World Magazine is proud to announce the 2008 Open Water Swimmers of the Year.
It's not too difficult to figure out who came home with the top award in this division with the first Olympic 10K available to settle the score about who is the best in elite open water competition.
Both gold medalists are honored by Swimming World in the December issue of the publication.
Larisa Ilchenko of Russia claimed the Female Open Water Swimmer of the Year award for the third straight time. Ilchenko, who hasn't lost an open water event at the World Championship level since 2004, casts a scary shadow for other competitors. Her trademark move is drafting off the leader throughout the bulk of the race before sprinting past for the win down the stretch. That's exactly how she won the Olympic gold.
Maarten van der Weijden of The Netherlands, the Male Open Water Swimmer of the Year, proved to be one of the more inspiring stories of the 2008 Olympics. At age 20, van der Weijden was diagnosed with Leukemia. Over the next few years, he underwent chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant as he fought off the potentially lethal condition. By 2003, he was back in the water and worked his way into the upper echelon of open water swimming by 2006. This past year proved to be nothing less than a storybook tale for van der Weijden turned the open water field on its head by sprinting for gold over the final 300 meters in Beijing after taking fourth at the Olympic qualifier.
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