Bruni Takes Marathon World Cup Lead With Setubal Win

Italy’s Rachele Bruni took over the top spot on the women’s point standings on FINA’s Marathon Swimming World Cup with a win in Setubal, Portugal, while Hungarian upstart Kristof Rasovszky won a surprise title on the men’s side.

Setubal marks the third stop of FINA’s 7-stop Marathon World Cup, which is FINA’s international series for Olympic-distance 10K swims, not to be confused with its Open Water Grand Prix, which runs a set of longer races spanning from 15K to 36K.

Bruni has now competed in all three stops so far, tying for second in Viedma, Argentina and taking 6th in Abu Dhabi. She won the Setbual stop with ease, topping all women by almost a full minute. Brazil’s Viviane Jungblut was second and Ecuador’s Samantha Arevalo a distant third, more than five minutes behind Bruni.

On the men’s side, Rasovszky beat out Germany’s Rob Muffels by about two seconds, as the two separated themselves from the rest of the field. Bronze medalist Andrea Manzi of Italy was about seven seconds back of the lead pair.

Previously on the tour, Rasovszky had just two points, but the win should vault him at least into the top 5.

Here’s a look at the top three finishers in each race, per FINA’s press release. You can find full results here.

Women:

1. Rachele Bruni, Italy – 1:37:36.28
2. Vivane Jungblut, Brazil – 1:37:37.23
3. Samantha Arevalo, Ecuador – 1:37:42.94

Men:

1. Kristof Rasovszky, Hungary – 1:29:50.97
2. Rob Muffels, Germany – 1:29:52.97
3. Andrea Manzi, Italy – 1:29:59.06

Also of note: former world champ Eva Fabian wrote an open letter the day before the event expressing concern about FINA’s new rules requiring wetsuits when water temperatures drop below 18 degrees. FINA officials, Fabian says, indicated that if they took six temperatures at different points across the course, the lowest temperature would be used to determine whether the wetsuit rules went into effect. Fabian says this could increase risk of heat exhaustion if athletes are swimming in wetsuits in a course that is mostly warm-water (and in warm air temperatures before the race), but has one low temperature that triggers the wetsuit rule. Open water swimmer Fran Crippen died during an open water swim where athletes complained of overly warm water temperatures and heat exhaustion.

That wasn’t a concern in Setubal specifically, though the issue still stands moving forward. FINA reports that the water temperature was measured between 21.2 and 21.6 degrees Celsius, well over the 18 degree threshold requiring wetsuits.