NEW YORK, Oct. 16. ROMAN Sloudnov, the only swimmer ever to break one minute for the 100-meter breaststroke, will be coming to New York after all, where he will compete in the Novo Nordisk Sprint Cup.<\/p>\n
Soudnov, the "Russian Rocket," had given up in despair yesterday in Moscow, where he was unable to obtain a visa to enter the United States. The US Embassy has been closed since last Wednesday, due to a bomb threat and, according to US officials, "will be closed indefinitely."<\/p>\n
Resigned, Sloudnov flew back last night to the Siberian city of Omsk, where he is a college student and trains under the watchful eye of his mother, who serves double duty as his coach.<\/p>\n
Today, Sloudnov learned that the Russian Olympic Committee had managed somehow to obtain a visa for him — though not for two female swimmers also scheduled to compete in the Sprint Cup. After getting the go-ahead from meet organizers in the U.S., he repacked and will fly to Moscow tomorrow, then on to New York on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The match-up between Sloudnov, American Ed Moses, the former world record-holder, and Germany's Mark Warnecke, the world record-holder for the 50-meter breaststroke, is touted as one of the highlights of the Sprint Cup. The meet has attracted many of the swimming world's top sprint stars, who will be competing for $310,000 in prizes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NEW YORK, Oct. 16. ROMAN Sloudnov, the only swimmer ever to break one minute for the 100-meter breaststroke, will be coming to New York after all, where he will compete<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[185,17939,336,597,146,519,502,15829,17937,2164,17782,87,142,17920,62,17938,68],"class_list":["post-2920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-zzzzzzzzz","tag-coach","tag-coming","tag-germany","tag-mark-warnecke","tag-moscow","tag-new-york","tag-novo-nordisk","tag-omsk","tag-russian-olympic-committee","tag-sprint","tag-sprint-cup","tag-swimmer","tag-swimming","tag-the-sprint-cup","tag-united-states","tag-us-embassy","tag-usd"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\r\n