RIO 2016 OLYMPIC OPEN WATER SWIMMING
- August 15th-16th, 2016
- 9AM Local Time (8AM U.S. East Coast Time)
- 10Km Race
- Fort Copacabana Beach
- Results
Full race recap to follow.
French swimmer Aurélie Muller has been disqualified from the silver medal position in the women’s 10km open water swim on Monday morning at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games. We presume there will be a protest, but for now that moves Brazilian swimmer Poliana Okimoto into bronze medal position and Italy’s Rachele Bruni into the silver medal position, both behind Sharon van Rouwendaal of the Netherlands.
In the final sprint of the closely-contested race, judges ruled that Muller obstructed Bruni toward the finish and disqualified her from the race. While a dominant van Rouwendaal won the race by 17 seconds, the next three finishers were closely bunched at the finish.
If the result holds, it would be Brazil’s first medal in swimming at these Olympics after they went o-for-everything in the pool.
Muller was the only swimmer disqualified, though 9 other swimmers were given yellow flags, or warnings, for misconduct at various points of the race:
| 5:00 | split 1 | 5 | CAN |
HORNER Stephanie
|
Yellow Flag |
| 16:00 | split 1 | 1 | MAS |
GAN Heidi
|
Yellow Flag |
| 23:00 | split 1 | 25 | POR |
NEVES Vania
|
Yellow Flag |
| 33:00 | split 2 | 3 | JPN |
KIDA Yumi
|
Yellow Flag |
| 37:00 | split 2 | 11 | POL |
ZACHOSZCZ Joanna
|
Yellow Flag |
| 49:00 | split 2 | 2 | ESP |
VILLAECIJA GARCIA Erika
|
Yellow Flag |
| 1:08:00 | split 3 | 12 | SLO |
PERSE Spela
|
Yellow Flag |
| split 4 | 22 | FRA |
MULLER Aurelie
|
Disqualified | |
| 1:42:00 | split 4 | 13 | HUN |
RISZTOV Eva
|
Yellow Flag |
| 1:47:00 | split 4 | 8 | RUS |
KRAPIVINA Anastasiia
|
Yellow Flag |
wpDiscuz
If this holds up it is a very harsh decision. The finish buoy was crooked and turned quite a bit forcing the swimmers to bunch closer. She may have blocked a bit but she was ahead and did have right of way in my opinion. The crooked finish barricade was the reason she had to come over even more at the end.
I believe the call was from the second attempt to touch the board wasn’t it? When Muller climbed Bruni?
As a ocean swimmer I can say that finish buoys would never stay perfectly in place in the ocean for obvious reasons. It doesn’t really matter if its crooked, as you can see seconds after Poliana Okimoto had chosen to swim a bit more to the right side and she was able to reach and touch the panel perfectly.
There was plenty of space to the right for Bruni and Muller and no reason to squish each other over to the left.
Very unfortunate, to swim for that long only to be DQ’d at the finish, it must be heartbreaking. She swam a great race in rough conditions though. Awesome swim by van Rouwendaal!!
That was very unfortunate. And quite frankly, this happens all the time during open water swimming, but most of the time the swimmers are not disqualified. The rules are the rules and are there for a reason. Whether intentional or not, she did block the other swimmer.