Shanghai Roundup: FINA Hints at Release of Psych Sheets, China Slips in Diving, 5K Open Water

…The big news, that everyone has been waiting for, is the release of the psych sheets for the World Championships whose swimming portion begins Sunday Morning Shanghai time (Saturday night American time). FINA will not release psych sheets until after their technical meeting, which is to take place on Saturday morning Shanghai time (Friday night American). The reason for this is because federations are allowed to substitute any entered athlete for any other entered athlete in any event at that meeting, so there’s a chance that lineups could still change…

…China had their first mistep in diving in the men’s 3-meter. The Chinese were cruising through the competition through four (of six) dives, with 30 points separating them from Russia’s Ilya Kakharov. Kakharov put a slight bit of pressure on with his 5th dive, a 2.5 forward with three twists, to score 97.5 points, though without error the Chinese would still win the meet handily. Unfortunately, this error came on the very next dive for China’s Qin Kai, who is a 5-time World Champion and the defending Olympic bronze medalist in this event. While executing a 4.5 forward, his right hand released his leg early. Besides earning poor technical marks in itself, this resulted in a horrendous landing that earned him twos and threes (and only 32 points) to slip from first to fifth. Though he responded with a fabulous final dive, he was unable to recover and medal.

His teammate Chong He took advantage of the situation and grabbed gold by 46 points over Kakharov. In bronze position was the other Russian competitor, Evgeny Kuznetsov. This marks the first time in this competition that a non-Chinese diver has beaten a Chinese diver, though they remain a perfect 8-for-8 in golds.

The lone American finalist, Troy Dumais, finished 5th, fewer than 14 points out of the medals…

…In the women’s open water 5k, the finish saw a mad dash between the three medalists, Ashley Twichell (USA, Swann Oberson (Switzerland), and Aureile Muller (France). Twichell overtook the lead with about 100 meters to go, but just couldn’t hang on. Oberson roared across the finish line in 1:00:39.7 for the gold, with Muller taking silver .4 back and Twichell bronze .5 back. Though Twichell would have liked to hang on for the victory, she can’t be disappointed with such a positive result in her first individual race of this level after being a relative newcomer to the sport. To leave her first World Championships with a gold (from the team event) and this bronze is a phenomenal showing for a relative infant to the sport. No Olympic bids handed out for this race, as only ther 10k is swum there…

…In the men’s 5k, Germany’s Thomas Lurz was able to turn the tables a bit from the 10k, and took gold over Greek 10k champion Spyros Gianniotis. Russia’s Evgeny Drattsev took bronze. With this result, Lurz will come away from the open water meet as the only swimmer to ever win three open water medals in a single World Championship (though that feat became significantly easier with the addition of the team event this year). The times in this race (56:16 for the winners) were on the slow side, which speaks to the heat of the water. Lurz will miss out on a chance for a 4th medal after pulling out of the 25k, saying that it was too warm. He’s not the first swimmer to back out of a race so far because of the temperature…