8.Feb.10   |  posted by: steve munatones  |   filed under: Events   |  (0) comments

The 2010 USA Swimming National Open Water Swimming 5K and 10K Championships will be the signature event over an exciting week of open water swimming events in Long Beach, California during the first week of June.

Elite athletes as well as age-group swimmers and masters athletes will be in for quite a treat.

Marine Stadium, site of the 1932 Olympic Rowing competition and the 1968 Olympic rowing trials, was recently designated as an official state historic site. The flat-water course is an ideal venue for watching some of the fastest open water swimmers in the world up close and personal. Swimmers from across the USA, Canada, Mexico, South Africa and Egypt are expected to compete for a handful of spots at the 2010 World Open Water Swimming Championships in July in Quebec, Canada

On the women's side, Olympian Chloe Sutton (see photo) will headline a tough field with NCAA champion Emily Bruneman, Eva Fabian and SIU's Kirsten Groome are all expected to battle for the top position.

Each woman has a completely different style of swimming and employ different racing strategies, so fans of the sport will be able to watch swimmers up close and observe who will have the right strategy and closing sprint to represent the USA at the world championships.

On the men's side, everything also appears up for grabs, but recent FINA World Cup victor Fran Crippen has the hot hand now. He has the speed, experience and endurance to be considered the strong favorite.

However, 2009 World Championship silver medalist Andrew Gemmell, Harvard University senior Alex Meyer and a host of young up-and-coming stars from coast-to-coast, as well as the international stars, are going to give Fran, one of the world's best closers, all he can handle.

The up-and-coming stars will be treated to an intensive training camp before the national championships where they will be taught the tricks of the trade. Most of America's international open water swimming stars come from this Open Water Select Camp, so we expect these young swimmers in the mix.

 

The athletes will compete five 2K loops with an in-the-water start and finish (see photo) which will provide great experience for the same expected course and water conditions as the 2010 World Open Water Swimming Championships and the 2012 London Olympics 10K Marathon Swim to be held in Hyde Park in central London.

The waters of Long Beach are ideal to help the athletes become accustomed to the relatively cool waters of Lac St-Jean at the World Championships and of the Serpentine Lake at the 2012 London Olympics.

After the 5K championships, the organizers are also holding a 1K and 2K races for age-group and masters swimmers and an innovative 3K mixed-gender team time trial race where teams of swimmers will be set off 30 seconds apart. The teams are clocked when the last swimmer finishes the 3K swim, which encourages the team members to properly draft and position themselves for the fastest times.

Additionally, a Global Open Water Swimming Symposium and Conference for elite swimmers, triathletes, channel swimmers, age-group swimmers, masters swimmers, endurance athletes, coaches, parents, officials and administrators will be held concurrently at the host hotel to the championships - the first time such an open water swimming conference will be held. The sport of open water swimming has quietly and steadily grown in size - escaping the eye of the media - and the global demand for the latest information on the techniques, trends and tactics of the sport has now justified a global conference.

With a sport that had 1.4 million participants in the US alone in 2009, and over 3,000 events worldwide, the open water swimming community of vendors, athletes, coaches, administrators and race promoters are now clamoring for information-sharing and networking opportunities. Long Beach will deliver on the demand.

Long Beach was selected as the location for the Global Open Water Swimming Symposium and Conference because so many great open water swimmers have developed in the waters of Southern California or live in the area over the past 50 years including Florence Chadwick, Greta Anderson, Lynne Cox, Penny Lee Dean, Paul Asmuth, Chad Hundeby, Chloe Sutton, Mark Warkentin and many others.

It will certainly be quite a week of open water swimming in Long Beach this coming June.