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It’s Gonna Be An Incredible Race with Warnings, Whistles, Yellow Cards, and Red Cards in the Olympic 10K Marathon Swim in the Seine

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The USA Swimming National Open Water Swimming Championships in Long Beach, California. In the 10 km race in Marine Stadium, Fran Crippen beat world champion Chip Peterson, Olympian Andrew Gemmell, 2012 Olympic bronze medalist Richard Weinberger of Canada, Olympian, and world champion Alex Meyer in a flat-out sprint to the finish.

Around each turn buoy, in and out of each stop at the feeding station, and down the final straightaway in the Olympic 10K Marathon Swim in the Seine, imagine this kind of pack swimming magnified and intensified this August 8th with 24 women from 17 countries and on August 9th with 33 men.

The current in the Seine with and against the athletes will make the marathon swim the most unpredictable and tactical in history. Like the 50m sprint in the pool, a major mistake in the race will essentially take any athlete out of medal position.

What will be quite difficult for the swimmers is to know, see, or sense the dynamic water flow ahead of them (by 5 meters or 25 meters or 100 meters) and THEN adjust their position – relative to their competitors in a pack. Even if the swimmers could know the water flow in the river ahead of them, they will have difficulties in changing the direction in which they swim. In packs, they will have to swim over the competitors on their left or right or ahead of them, and the probability of receiving a yellow card or red card increases significantly.

In a pack, the swimmers will have great difficulty seeing what water flow is better with a few or many competitors ahead of them. Those competitors are kicking hard and their arm strokes are blocking views of the swimmers behind them. Plus the energy, adrenalin, and dynamic nature of pack swimming usually is a huge barrier for swimmers to swim apart from the lead pack or trailing packs. There are certain areas along the course where there are obvious places to avoid and eddies behind the bridge pylons, but the river has always appeared to be quite dynamic – constantly changing.

Also, because of the time of the start (7:30 am), there will be the glare of the sun during half of the race. Swimming towards the sun and seeing well will be a major difficulty for most and an impossibility for some swimmers.

Because there will be some any athletes smashing into one another at the turn buoys and up and down the straightaways, there will also be lots of whistles and warnings given by the referees – and most probably several yellow cards and possibly red cards that will disqualify swimmers.

The physicality will be off the charts because of the intensity of the race, strength of the currents, narrowness of the river, talent of the athletes, and desire for optimal positioning. Bumping, impeding, scratching, pulling [on legs or arms], cutting off, veering into, tapping or touching [repeatedly], slapping, clipping, conking, swiping, whacking, obstructing, ziplining, interfering, nudging, kicking, elbowing, pushing, jostling, shoving, crowding, banging [against], smacking, flotsam, and possibly (seen and unseen) pull backs and ziplining will occur.

The sights and sounds of giving a yellow card are shown below when Sid Cassidy officiated the 2009 USA Swimming National Open Water Swimming Championship in Fort Meyers, Florida.

2024 Olympic 10K Marathon Swim Female Finalists on August 8th

2024 Olympic 10K Marathon Swim Male Finalists on August 9th

Olympic 10K Marathon Swim Course – Near The Start

The course was set up this morning for the mixed triathlon relay where the swim leg is a 300-meter out-and-back course:

Olympic 10K Marathon Swim Course – Mid-course

Olympic 10K Marathon Swim Commentary and Articles

Race Course on the Seine

© 2024 Daily News of Open Water Swimming

“to educate, enthuse, and entertain all those who venture beyond the shoreline“

A World Open Water Swimming Federation project.

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