Start lists arrive for Mare Nostrum’s Canet stop, Peaty & the Brits joining the party

The start lists for the first stop on the Mare Nostrum series have been published, with world record-breaking breaststroker Adam Peaty among the biggest names.

Mare Nostrum opens this weekend in Canet-en-Roussillon, France and spans three different meets over the course of about a week. We reported last week on the start lists for the series finale in Monaco, and you can read about that here.

The Canet event looks to feature many of the same stars as the Monaco meet, plus a few major additions.

Great Britain is probably the biggest addition as a federation. The Brits will only swim the first two stops of the series, but are bringing their A-team, who have been training in France in preparation for this summer’s World Championships.

Britain’s participation means perhaps the biggest name in attendance at the meet will be the record-smashing breaststroker Peaty, who became the first man under 58 seconds in the 100 breast earlier this spring. Peaty leads Britain’s stout breastroking group, which also features Andrew Willis, Ross Murdoch and Michael Jamieson among others.

Other swimmers participating for Team GBR: Fran Halsall, Ben Proud, Hannah Miley, Jazz Carlin and Chris Walker-Hebborn.

Lithuania’s Ruta Meilutyte is tangentially connected to that group – she trains in Great Britain but represents Lithuania on the international stage, where she’s a world record-holding breaststroker. The teenager is also swimming in Canet.

The other federation with a bunch of big additions to the Mare Nostrum lineup is the Netherlands, which brings its powerhouse of a female roster to Canet. That includes Olympic champ Ranomi Kromowidjojo, World Cup stalwart Inge Dekker and rangy freestyler Femke Heemskerk.

With that group now in the mix, this weekend’s event should be a slugfest in a whole host of events, given the core of swimmers who appear on the start lists for both Canet and Monaco. Some of that star-studded cast:

• Japan’s Kosuke Hagino, perhaps the most versatile swimmer in the world right now as well as the world’s best IMer
• American swimming icon Ryan Lochte
• His SwimMAC club teammate Arianna Vanderpool-Wallace, a dangerous sprinter for the Bahamas
• Hungarian Iron Lady Katinka Hosszu
• South Africa’s butterfly Olympic champ Chad le Clos
• Danish world record-holding breaststroker Rikke Moller Pedersen
• Canadian star and NCAA champ Kierra Smith
• Danish flyer Jeanette Ottesen
• American Melanie Margalis, coming off a spectacular showing at the Charlotte Pro Swim Series

And that’s just a few of the names that jump out. The Canet event should be absolutely loaded, with big-time contenders in every event.

You can check out the full start lists here.