As a result of the USA Swimming National 10K Open Water Swimming Championships in Long Beach, California last weekend, USA Swimming selected its world championship team to compete against the world in Lac St-Jean in Roberval, Quebec, a city and a province that focuses its attention and energies on open water swimming each summer.

Led by 2009 world championship bronze medalist Fran Crippen (Pennsylvania) and 2005 world 10K champion Chip Peterson (North Carolina, shown above) who will both swim the 5K and 10K races, the American team is a relatively young group of confident athletes all with medal potential.

Alex Meyer (New York), Joe Kinderwater (Pennsylvania), Haley Anderson (California) and Emily Hanson (Illinois) will all swim the 25K while Eva Fabian (New Hampshire) and Christine Jennings (Colorado) will continue their stroke-for-stroke battles in the 5K and 10K races…with significantly more on the line.

In front of tens of thousands of cheering and knowledgeable fans in the prestigious Lac St-Jean venue, the American team will have the opportunity to prove themselves against the world’s best. The men will face the likes of German great Thomas Lurz and Bulgarian hero Petar Stoychev while the women will go to battle against world champions Keri-Anne Payne of Great Britain, Melissa Gorman of Australia, Poliana Okimoto of Brazil and Angela Maurer of Germany.

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