The Open Water National Championships are taking place this weekend in Miromar Lakes, FL off the campus of Florida Gulf Coast University. The weather for the event is just about perfect. The air temperature is 75 degrees and overcast, with a little humidity, although that shouldn’t affect the swimmers. There is no wind, no sun, and the water temperature is 80-81 degree.
It was a great race that came down to a four woman sprint down the final stretch. Haley Anderson was challenging for the win, but she couldn’t hold off the young Becca Mann. Mann finished about a half body length ahead of Anderson, getting her hand on the touch pad to win the event. Anderson finished just behind her and Ashley Twichell was third. The fourth member of the lead pack was Emily Brunemann.
From what we saw, it appears Becca Mann and Haley Anderson will represent Team USA at the 2015 FINA World Championships later this summer.
Full results from the women’s 10k race can be found by clicking this link.
Danjohnrob – yes, the Olympic open water race is 10k. At the world championships, there is a 5k, 10k, and 25k
Thank you!
Men’s race live right now
Link here
http://usaswimming.org/DesktopDefault.aspx?TabId=1422&Alias=Rainbow&Lang=en
As usual, live broadcast has problems at end, then quits.
For once I tried to watch the end of an open water race, the live webcast has crashed!
Very close race with Gemmell, Wilimovsky and a few other guys.
Wilimovsky won.
Whomever USA Swimming contracted with to do the broadcast should not be paid. In this day-and-age they should not be crashing (likely due to the number of people going to watch). Whomever they contracted with should easily be able to watch the number of viewers and up the availability when necessary. Very common nowadays, and only amateurs screw that up these days.
Big congratulations to client Haley Anderson finishing 2nd here and qualifying for the 2015 FINA World Championships in Kazan. This was a heck of a race with lots of strategy by Twichell and Brunemann not going in for a feed at the 3rd lap creating some decent distance ahead of Haley, Becca Mann and the rest of the pack.
The final 2 buoys to the finish really showed a tremendous amount from both Becca and Haley on the will to win. Congrats to Becca Mann in her National Championship, Haley with Silver and Ashley Twichell on the Bronze.
I disagree – Becca proves you need speed and aerobic conditioning and a little bit of strategy. Specific Open Water training (going on long swims in the lake/ocean; spending countless hours doing turn buoy drills etc etc) is overrated and takes time away from building the endurance and speed needed to finish the race strong. This is what is wrong with OW swimming… get in the pool and do hard work, have a strategy, swim smart and be tough as nails at the end. No excuses. That makes a champ. I think her other coach is Erik Posegay who has done amazing things with distance swimmers. Top notch.
With all due respect, I don’t understand what there was to disagree with. I asked for confirmation that Mann was still coached by Bowman (which considering that he is apparently moving to AZ soon is not a stupid question) and whether she needs another coach that specializes in open water swimming to be so successful. In your response you stated she does have a specialty coach. I know very little about open water swimming. I was expressing interest and asking for information. Isn’t the point of posting an article like this on SwimSwam to increase interest and inform readers?
Let no one disagree with the one known as “OliveGardenLover.”
I don’t actually have anything to contribute, I just never would have expected such an aggressively stated opinion to come from a name like that.
Carry on.
While I’m asking questions, LOL, am I correct in assuming the Olympic open water race is 10K, because that distance seems to be emphasized in the US Open Water Swim Team selection criteria?
I wonder how Katie Ledecky would do in open water. Just a strange curiosity I always had. I know her coaches son, Andrew Gemmell, was pretty successful.
I remember Kate Ziegler at her peak world record form giving open water a try and deciding she simply didn’t like it compared to pool swimming. It would be very interesting though to see Ledecky give open water a try, even if it was a shorter race like the Tiburon Mile, which is back for 2015, even if it did turn out to be a one off sort of experiment.
Is Becca Mann coached by Bob Bowman? If so, I wonder if she has a second coach who specializes in open water swimming, because I would think there is a lot more to winning an event like this than purely aerobic conditioning.
just guessing that no she is not coached by Bowman exclusively. hopefully if he was her coach, Bowman would not have missed her Olympic Trials to be in ASU on Friday. My guess would be she swims with Posegay most of the time.