How global is open water swimming? At the recent FINA World Championships, there were four new countries that were represented by the gold medalists on top of the awards podium.

For the first time in FINA World Championship history, Bulgaria (Petar Stoychev in the men’s 25K), Brazil (Ana Marcela Cunha in the women’s 25K), Switzerland (Swann Oberson in the men’s 5K) and Greece (Spyros Gianniotis in the men’s 10K) stood a top of the podium.

Although Ana Marcela just missed out to automatically qualify for the Olympic 10K Marathon Swim, she won the 25K world championship under inhospitable conditions and was selected by FINA as its 2010 Open Water Swimming Woman of the Year:

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