2015 WORLD UNIVERSITY GAMES
- July 4th-July 11th, 2015 (Saturday-Saturday)
- Gwangju, South Korea
- Prelims 8:30AM/Finals 7PM (local time)
- Prelims 7:30PM (day before)/Finals 6AM (U.S. Eastern Time)
- The official FISU feed (finals only): http://www.livefisu.tv
- In the United States: ESPN3.com
- Results
Russia added one more gold to their tally in the men’s 10k Open Water race as Anton Evsikov took the win with a time of 1:55:09.6. Evsikov won by just three tenths of a second over Italy’s Matteo Furlan (1:55:09.9), while Furlan had to settle for silver.
The Italians finished out their Universiade in style; after their huge upset in the women’s 4×100 medley relay over both Japan and the USA, they grabbed silver (Furlan) and bronze (Mario Sanzullo) in the men’s 10k and followed that up with a 1-2 sweep in the women’s 10k.
Arianna Bridi was Italy’s gold medalist in the women’s 10k, with her final time of 2:03:19.4 distancing herself almost 40 full seconds ahead of her country mate Ilaria Raimondi (2:03.58.9). USA’s Stephanie Peacock grabbed bronze at 2:04:53.1, and it would be another full minute before the fourth place finisher Mariia Novikova would end the race.
For the U.S. men, Arthur Frayler, who was one of the open water swimmers who also competed in the pool at the World University Games, had the highest finish of 4th place (1:55:12.8).
On the men’s side, 1st and 4th were separated by just 3.2 seconds, while 1st and 8th were separated by under a minute and a half. Interestingly enough, the 4th place finisher on the women’s side was a good 2 minutes and 33 seconds behind the winner, and 1st and 8th were separated by over five full minutes. Those stats give you a good idea about how dominant Bridi was in her win, and how comparatively competitive the men’s race turned out to be.
With that, all swimming events have concluded at the 2015 World University Games. There isn’t much time for swimming fans to catch their breath, however, as this weekend is full of several big meets and the 2015 Toronto Pan Am Games have just begun. Open water events will be held this weekend, while pool swimming at Pan Ams begins next Tuesday.