{"id":628150,"date":"2025-12-03T16:31:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T23:31:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/?p=628150"},"modified":"2025-12-04T05:25:41","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T12:25:41","slug":"u-s-open-day-1-ilia-sibirtsev-tops-bobby-finke-in-1500-freestyle-to-open-meet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/u-s-open-day-1-ilia-sibirtsev-tops-bobby-finke-in-1500-freestyle-to-open-meet\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Open, Day 1: Ilia Sibirtsev Tops Bobby Finke in 1500 Freestyle to Open Meet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>U.S. Open, Day 1: Ilia Sibirtsev Tops Bobby Finke in 1500 Freestyle to Open Meet<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The last major long course competition of 2025 began Wednesday evening in Austin, Texas, with numerous top American competitors in town for the U.S. Open. A full slate of preliminaries and finals will begin Thursday after heats of the 1500 freestyle started things off. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/paris-olympics-world-record-by-bobby-finke-was-top-male-performance-of-games\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Two-time Olympic champion and world-record holder<\/a>\u00a0<strong>Bobby Finke<\/strong> raced in the men&#8217;s event, but he was unable to keep pace down the stretch thanks to the efforts of\u00a0<strong>Ilia Sibirtsev<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>In the first of two men&#8217;s heats, Finke held the lead for the first half of the race, narrowly holding Sibirtsev, <strong>Ivan Puskovitch<\/strong> and <strong>Luke Whitlock<\/strong> at bay, but Sibirtsev took over for good at the 950-meter mark and gradually extended his lead to 3.70 seconds by the finish. Sibirtsev, a former Louisville Cardinal who competed for Uzbekistan at the Paris Olympics, recorded a time of 15:05.51 in his victorious effort.<\/p>\n<p>Finke came in second in 15:09.21. That was more than 38 seconds behind his own world record, but that&#8217;s hardly an unusual occurrence for Finke, who is known for saving his best races for major competitions. Puskovitch, the U.S. representative in the men&#8217;s 10k open water swim in Paris, was third in 15:10.91 while Whitlock, an American Olympian alongside Finke in the 800 free last year, ended up fourth (15:18.45).<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"628151\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/u-s-open-day-1-ilia-sibirtsev-tops-bobby-finke-in-1500-freestyle-to-open-meet\/screenshot-2025-12-03-181839\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/vmrw8k5h.tinifycdn.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Screenshot-2025-12-03-181839.png\" data-orig-size=\"1148,922\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"Screenshot 2025-12-03 181839\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-medium-file=\"https:\/\/vmrw8k5h.tinifycdn.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Screenshot-2025-12-03-181839-700x500.png\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/vmrw8k5h.tinifycdn.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Screenshot-2025-12-03-181839-1024x822.png\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-628151\" src=\"https:\/\/vmrw8k5h.tinifycdn.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Screenshot-2025-12-03-181839.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"898\" height=\"721\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vmrw8k5h.tinifycdn.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Screenshot-2025-12-03-181839.png 1148w, https:\/\/vmrw8k5h.tinifycdn.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Screenshot-2025-12-03-181839-1024x822.png 1024w, https:\/\/vmrw8k5h.tinifycdn.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Screenshot-2025-12-03-181839-249x200.png 249w, https:\/\/vmrw8k5h.tinifycdn.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Screenshot-2025-12-03-181839-300x241.png 300w, https:\/\/vmrw8k5h.tinifycdn.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Screenshot-2025-12-03-181839-450x361.png 450w, https:\/\/vmrw8k5h.tinifycdn.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Screenshot-2025-12-03-181839-1121x900.png 1121w, https:\/\/vmrw8k5h.tinifycdn.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Screenshot-2025-12-03-181839-533x428.png 533w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 898px) 100vw, 898px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>In the women&#8217;s event, the win went to Ohio State&#8217;s\u00a0<strong>Mila Nikanorov<\/strong>, an Ohio State sophomore who was the gold medalist in the 800 free at the World University Games this year. Nikanarov produced a time of 16:19.80 to win by six seconds over Louisville&#8217;s\u00a0<strong>Leticia Fassina Romao<\/strong>, who touched in 16:25.92. Third went to Ohio State&#8217;s\u00a0<strong>Emma Finlin<\/strong> (16:37.59).<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"628152\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/u-s-open-day-1-ilia-sibirtsev-tops-bobby-finke-in-1500-freestyle-to-open-meet\/screenshot-2025-12-03-181825\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/vmrw8k5h.tinifycdn.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Screenshot-2025-12-03-181825.png\" data-orig-size=\"1144,923\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"Screenshot 2025-12-03 181825\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-medium-file=\"https:\/\/vmrw8k5h.tinifycdn.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Screenshot-2025-12-03-181825-700x500.png\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/vmrw8k5h.tinifycdn.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Screenshot-2025-12-03-181825-1024x826.png\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-628152\" src=\"https:\/\/vmrw8k5h.tinifycdn.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Screenshot-2025-12-03-181825.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"901\" height=\"727\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vmrw8k5h.tinifycdn.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Screenshot-2025-12-03-181825.png 1144w, https:\/\/vmrw8k5h.tinifycdn.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Screenshot-2025-12-03-181825-1024x826.png 1024w, https:\/\/vmrw8k5h.tinifycdn.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Screenshot-2025-12-03-181825-248x200.png 248w, https:\/\/vmrw8k5h.tinifycdn.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Screenshot-2025-12-03-181825-300x242.png 300w, https:\/\/vmrw8k5h.tinifycdn.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Screenshot-2025-12-03-181825-450x363.png 450w, https:\/\/vmrw8k5h.tinifycdn.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Screenshot-2025-12-03-181825-1115x900.png 1115w, https:\/\/vmrw8k5h.tinifycdn.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Screenshot-2025-12-03-181825-533x430.png 533w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 901px) 100vw, 901px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The meet continues Thursday with the 50 backstroke, 400 free, 200 IM, 50 breaststroke and 50 free on the schedule.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.omegatiming.com\/2025\/2025-toyota-u-s-open-championships-live-results\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Results<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>U.S. Open, Day 1: Ilia Sibirtsev Tops Bobby Finke in 1500 Freestyle to Open Meet The last major long course competition of 2025 began Wednesday evening in Austin, Texas, with<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":509247,"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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,122077,7],"tags":[137074,72820,93805,135006],"class_list":["post-628150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-americas","category-usa","tag-2025-u-s-open","tag-bobby-finke","tag-ilia-sibirtsev","tag-mila-nikanorov"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - 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