South Africa announces Raia Rapida roster, led by Roland Schoeman

The final team has announced its roster for the Raia Rapida format meet in Brazil, with South Africa tabbing Roland Schoeman & co. for its four-person team.

The sprint-based meet will feature South Africa, the U.S.A., Italy and hosts Brazil in a short, fast-paced, made-for-TV swimming event in early September.

Each team enters four swimmers, one in each stroke. Each swimmer gets to compete in a multi-round showdown, a 50-meter sprint in their stroke against the three competitors from the rival nations. Each round, the last-place finisher is eliminated, until each stroke’s shootout ends with a one-on-one battle between the top two swimmers.

At the end of the meet, all four nations will contest a 200 medley relay with national bragging rights on the line.

Per Globo.com, South Africa’s team will be headed by veteran Roland Schoeman, the ageless wonder who at age 35 is still among the world’s best pure sprinters. Schoeman has made his career on a dominating start and great fast-twitch speed – he could compete at this meet in several strokes, but will take the role of butterflyer for South Africa.

Also on the South African roster:

  • Gerhard Zandberg (back)
  • Giulio Zorzi (breast)
  • Roland Schoeman (fly)
  • Bradley Tandy (free)

You can read more about the other three lineups here, but we’ve also republished them below:

USA:

Italy:

  • Mirco di Tora
  • Fabio Scozzoli
  • Luca Dotto
  • Michele Santucci

Brazil:

  • Daniel Orzechowski
  • Felipe Franca
  • Nicolas Santos
  • Matheus Santana

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luigi
8 years ago

Not to be a pain in the ..s, but it’s Luca and not Lucca (Dotto) and Michele, not Michelle (Santucci)

ok
8 years ago

I expect schoeman vs santos in the fly to be interesting.

John
8 years ago

“Still amongst the worlds best pure sprinters?”

Don’t agree with that. Dude is past his prime.

ERVINFORTHEWIN
Reply to  John
8 years ago

Toally agree ; Dressel is probably allready faster than Schoeman on the 50 free .

Uberfan
Reply to  ERVINFORTHEWIN
8 years ago

Short course meters 50? Nah he held the world record till manaudou broke it by .04 Dressel isn’t close to manaudou in freestyle

MiKE
Reply to  Uberfan
8 years ago

The record was done in a supersuit. Schoeman didn’t even crack 22 this year while Dressel dropped .7

Nadine
Reply to  John
8 years ago

He is one of the best sprinters of all time!

About Jared Anderson

Jared Anderson

Jared Anderson swam for nearly twenty years. Then, Jared Anderson stopped swimming and started writing about swimming. He's not sick of swimming yet. Swimming might be sick of him, though. Jared was a YMCA and high school swimmer in northern Minnesota, and spent his college years swimming breaststroke and occasionally pretending …

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