{"id":484641,"date":"2021-08-04T09:32:20","date_gmt":"2021-08-04T16:32:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/?p=484641"},"modified":"2021-08-04T09:32:20","modified_gmt":"2021-08-04T16:32:20","slug":"tokyo-olympics-mens-10k-open-water-race-to-conclude-swimming-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/tokyo-olympics-mens-10k-open-water-race-to-conclude-swimming-action\/","title":{"rendered":"Tokyo Olympics: Men’s 10K Open Water Race to Conclude Swimming Action"},"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. A day after Sharon van Rouwendaal\u00a0<\/strong>pulled away from the women’s field at the end to win gold by 17 seconds, Ferry Weertman<\/strong> got his hand on the pad first by seven tenths over Greece’s\u00a0Spyridon Gianniotis<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

One day after Brazil’s Ana Marcela Cunha<\/strong> took gold in the women’s 10k and van Rouwendaal edged Australia’s Kareena Lee<\/strong> for silver, t<\/a>he men’s open water race will conclude the swimming at the Tokyo Olympics at Odaiba MarinePark, the same site as the triathlon competition early in the Games. Weertman will be back to try to defend his gold medal, 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