2016 RUSSIAN CHAMPIONSHIPS / OLYMPIC TRIALS
- April 16-23rd, 2016
- Moscow, Russia
- Prelims 09:00/Finals 18:00 Local Time
- Prelims 02:00/Finals 11:00 U.S. Eastern Time
- Live results (IN ENGLISH – including event-by-event start lists)
- Olympic selection standards
Prior to the final of the men’s 50 freestyle on Friday night in Moscow at the second-to-last day of the 2016 Russian National Championships and Olympic Trials, a man in a rubber duck inner tube jumped in the pool and halted competition. Based on the reaction of security guards, the man was not supposed to be in the water.
A video posted above by Zharienov Yaroslav shows the man swimming some form of freestyles, as best he could in the suit, leisurely down the pool, before two athletes jump in to remove him.
While these sort of incidents are not uncommon in other sports, it highlights an interesting issue in swimming. While most meets of any substantial size have security, that security is not necessarily equipped to jump in a pool to stop an intruder, either in their dress or their in-water abilities. This incident ended with relatively-minor incident, but could have been a dangerous situation for the athletes.
According to Russian news agency TASS, one of the two swimmers who dove in to escort the man out of the pool was veteran Sergey Fesikov, who was a member of the Russian 400 free relay team that took a bronze medal at the London Olympic Games.
Once things calmed down, Vlad Morozov won the 50 free in an Olympic Qualifying Time of 22.01.
There was no prelims session on Saturday, the last day of the meet, and competition will conclude beginning at 6:00 PM local time, 11:00 AM U.S. Eastern Time.
Now those duckies would never have been available during the soviet years & Mr Fukiendofhistory is proved wrong yet again.
Soviet life saving consisted of someone standing on solid ground yelling at you by megaphone to get back OR ELSE!
This might explain Vlad’s relatively slow time in the final compared to his prelim and semi times. He either got thrown off his game, or he was laughing through the whole race.
Chances copious amounts of Vodka consumption contributed to the “incident?” 101%
Crowd entertainment between the races?
Now this is awesome!! I want this at all meets.
This is hilarious. I would probably be upset if it hapenned to me as a swimmer in that heat, but it’s still funny.