{"id":484537,"date":"2021-08-03T10:30:46","date_gmt":"2021-08-03T17:30:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/?p=484537"},"modified":"2021-08-03T10:48:38","modified_gmt":"2021-08-03T17:48:38","slug":"tokyo-olympics-who-will-capture-gold-medals-in-unpredictable-open-water-10k-races","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/tokyo-olympics-who-will-capture-gold-medals-in-unpredictable-open-water-10k-races\/","title":{"rendered":"Tokyo Olympics: Who Will Capture Gold Medals in Unpredictable Open Water 10K Races?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tokyo Olympics: Who Will Capture Gold Medals in Unpredictable Open Water 10K Races?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 2016, the final hurrah of the Olympic swimming competition in Rio saw the Netherlands emerge with gold medals in the women’s and men’s 10-kilometer races, held at Copacabana Beach. In the women’s race,\u00a0Sharon van Rouwendaal\u00a0<\/strong>pulled away form the field at the end to win gold by 17 seconds, while\u00a0Ferry Weertman<\/strong> got his hand on the pad first by seven tenths over Greece’s\u00a0Spyridon Gianniotis<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The open water competitions will again conclude the swimming at the Tokyo Olympics, with the races taking place at Odaiba Olympic Park, the same site as the triathlon competition early in the Games. Both van Rouwendaal and Weertman will be back to try to defend their gold medals, but the very nature of open water makes these events so difficult to predict. The best swimmer often \u2014 or perhaps usually \u2014 does not touch first. Without lane lines, the swimmers race with each other, swimming in packs and drafting, pulling ahead and falling back. They cannot simply stick to their race strategy. Instead, they must race according to what the rest of the field is doing.<\/p>\n