For the third consecutive year, Alex Meyer of Crimson Aquatics has been honored with the 2013 Fran Crippen Memorial Male Open Water Swimmer of the Year Award at the 2013 United States Aquatic Sports Convention. Meyer competed in the 10K and 25K races at the 2013 FINA World Championships in Barcelona, Spain, and he claimed a 4th place finish in the 25K along with a 42nd place finish in the 10k. Previously, Meyer had won gold in the 25K at the 2010 World Championships, which were staged at Lac Saint-Jean in Canada. More recently, Meyer competed at the BCT Gdynia Marathon swim, which was a 19.5-kilometer race held in northern Poland. Meyer won the race in a new record time of 3 hours 53 minutesand 32 seconds out of a field of 14 swimmers.
The Fran Crippen Memorial Male Open Water Swimmer of the Year Award is presented to the most outstanding American male open water swimmer each year. Since its inception in 2011, the year following legendary American open water swimmer Fran Crippen’s untimely death in October of 2010, Meyer has claimed the prestigious award each year. Crippen and Meyer had competed internationally together, and Meyer has mentioned numerous times that Fran has been the most inspirational figure in his open water career. After Meyer had been named as the only Open Water representative for the United States for the 2012 Olympics, Meyer had stated in an interview with USA Swimming correspondent Bob Schaller that “I realized that spot had to be unfilled, because that is Fran Crippen’s spot. That is something Fran and I talked about a lot. We dreamed of it together, being Olympic teammates in London. … I’m not going to London alone. Fran’s going with me, and we’re going to represent our country, our schools, our family and friends, and we are going to give it our best.”
The Convention is being held in Garden Grove, California, and is a week-long event between September 9th and September 15th. Previous sites for the Convention in recent years include Greensboro, NC (2012) and Jacksonville, FL (2011).