Press Release Courtesy of North Sea Swim Meet: 14 Rio Swimmers to Start at North Sea Swim Meet
14 Rio Swimmers to start at North Sea Swim Meet
This weekend the traditional North Sea Swim Meet will be arranged in Stavanger, Norway for the 43th time.
The pool is well renowed for beeing fast and many fast swimmers have attended the meet over the years. 2016 is no exemption, no less than 14 athletes on the start block this weekend represented their respective nations in the Rio Olympics.
10 nations are represented at the meet this year, and the organizers are waiting on meet records and top international times from swimmers like fresh European Champions Luca Dotto (100 free) and Franziska Hentcke (200 butterfly), 3 time olympians Marco Bellotti and Michele Santucci, long distance phenomen Pal Joensen and Florian Welbrock, only to mention a few.
The whole Norwegian National Team will attend the meet, just coming down from 3 week of altitud training in Sierra Nevada, Spain a few days ago. Unfortunatly Olympic Finalist Henrik Christiansen (19) got a stomach flue and will most likely not compete as planned this weekend. Instead the team have to rely on the other 3 swimmers pre-selected for WC in Windsor, Canada to shine in his absence. Olympian Susann Bjørnsen(23) will battle among others Nina Kost (Ger) on her specialties 50 and 100 freestyle. Susann set a new Norwegian record in the 50 free in Rio with 25,05. Markus Lie (21), also set a new Norwegian LC record this year when he as the first Norwegian broke the 50sek mark on 100 freestyle. The last pre-selected athlete for the worlds is local youngster Truls Wigdel. At the age of 17 he still have a whole year left as a junior. Truls have allready attended both senior and Junior LC EC this year, with a 6th place in 400 freestyle (3.53,24) as his best result.