The swimming pool leg may be only a week away on what is going to be another Swimming World Championships edition in Doha, Qatar with just six months out from the Summer Olympics in Paris, France as there has been a number of postponements in the last few years including Australia’s outstanding campaign half a year ago during the last World Champs in Fukuoka, Japan, due to COVID. But yesterday we saw such a thrilling end to the women’s 10km Open Water Swimming race Final where a few frontrunners were vying side-by-side for that one and only gold medal including two of our Aussies such as Moesha Johnson and Maddy Gough. The gold has ultimately went to Sharon Van Rouwendaal though from the Netherlands who defeated Spaniard Maria De Valdes by just 0.001 of a sec at the finish line, but Johnson swam really well & was oh so close too despite falling just outside the medal spots to Angelica Andre from Portugal by just 0.002 & 0.004 off Van Rouwendaal in 4th. Now Gough just couldn’t hold on a bit longer down as she would’ve liked that would give us the best chance down in 18th but great seeing her working together and backing up her team-mate Johnson out of a 70-odd field which wasn’t easy. Well done to both as it’s the men’s turn later today from 5.30pm AEDT before the race distance will be halved by 5km going into Tuesday for the Men’s and Wednesday for the Women’s respectively. Let’s hope we can see an odd Aussie medal there or even a gold one better by Chelsea Gubecka in the 5km race after she finished silver at the previous WC.
