2023 World Aquatics Open Water World Cup – Mixed 4 x 1500m
- December 2-3, 2023
- Funchal, Madeira, Portugal
- Final Stop of the 2023 Series
- Livestream
- Results
Full Race, Courtesy of World Aquatics:
The final event of the 2023 World Aquatics Open Water World Cup took place on Sunday, and it was the mixed 4 x 1500m relay. The individual 10k races took place Saturday and you can read about each of those swims here:
Moesha Johnson took the first leg out strongly for the Aussies, handing over a convincing 20 second lead to world championship silver medalist Chelsea Gubecka. This was no surprise, as Johnson is an experienced pool swimmer in this same distance. Johnson finished in 4th place at the 2022 World Championships in the 1500m free, posting a 15:55.75 in the process. She also placed 10th in the individual 5km distance at last summer’s World Championships in Fukuoka.
Gubecka did her job on the second leg, expanding the lead by an additional 10 seconds heading into the second exchange. Gubecka is no stranger to the open water scene, as she was a two-time medalist at the World Championships last summer. There, she collected an individual silver medal in the 10km as well as a bronze medal in the team event.
On the back two legs of the race, Bailey Armstrong and Kyle Lee did everything they could to hold the lead for the Aussies. Armstrong touched at the end of his leg just 5 seconds ahead of Italy, as Olympic Champion Gregorio Paltrinieri had a monster leg to make up 25 seconds on the Australians. Domenico Acerenza, who won the men’s individual 10km distance yesterday, tried to catch Lee down the backstretch. He ultimately came up one second short, as Lee held on to get the final touch (1:06:05.40) – exactly one second ahead of the Italians. Hungary was in the race the entire time with Australia and Italy, touching between them at the finish but ultimately got disqualified.
France had a strong back half to the race, overtaking Portugal to grab 3rd. Their team consisted of Aurelie Muller, Carolina Laure Jouisse, Sacha Velly, and Logan Fontaine.
The Australians will take home $5,000 USD for their victory, while the Italians ($3,000 USD) and French ($2,000 USD) also earned a sum of money. Note that the money is a split pot, meaning each team will split the earnings rather than each team member receiving the full amount.
Top 10 Results:
- Australia (Johnson, Gubecka, Armstrong, Lee) – 1:06:05.40
- Italy (Taddeucci, Bridi, Paltrinieri, Acerenza)- 1:06.06.40
- France (Muller, Jouisse, Velly, Fontaine) – 1:06:49.50
- Portugal – 1:07:42.50
- Spain – 1:07:52.70
- Australia ‘B’ – 1:07:52.80
- Hungary ‘B’ – 1:08:03.30
- Brazil – 1:08:31.70
- Turkey – 1:11:18.00
- Turkey ‘B’ – 1:11:19.10
What’d Hungary get DQ’d for?
Still trying to get that clarified myself. Due to the first 3 swimmers in the team having their splits shown on the results page, I am guessing it was Razovsky that DQ’d, his changeover start looked ok to me, all the turns at each Bouy looked fine, so I can only presume it was something to do with the finish “Argy Bargy” that was going on 🤷.
Rasovszky did something similar in Fukuoka in the 10k I think it was.
It’s Openwater, they all do it to a certain degree. Kyle did it to Nick Sloman in 5km finish of Aussie titles this year and to Klemet of Germany at Fukuoka World Champs relay where the Aussies got Bronze over Germany. Lee wouldn’t have been fazed or scared to give it back, he’s a tuff racer.
Razovsky and Lee certainly giving to each other as much as each other from what I saw but obviously judges on course must have seen something I didn’t, unless he was DQ’d for some entirely different reasons.
honestly this seems like the only exciting way to do a 4x mile relay, doing it in a pool seems lame but the open water length lets you really get an idea of how far they are
No US team?
Nope. The US doesn’t care about these series, it was just a convenient race to run their qualification for Worlds.
They should because there distance swimming is based on endurance & stamina.
Why they can swim longer.
American swim coaches should have all Americans swim open water.
Makes any of your distance easy to swim