RIO 2016 OLYMPIC OPEN WATER SWIMMING
- August 15th-16th, 2016
- 9AM Local Time (8AM U.S. East Coast Time)
- 10Km Race
- Fort Copacabana Beach
- Results
British swimmer Jack Burnell, who touched 5th in the men’s 10km open water marathon swim on Tuesday morning, has been red-flagged and disqualified in another raucous finish in Rio.
Just like in the women’s 10k, there was a lot of bumping, jarring, and borderline wrestling at the finish of the men’s race – where gold and silver between the Netherlands’ Ferry Weertman and Spiros Gianniotis had to be separated by photos not touch pads – and the same situation existed between three swimmers for bronze – Marc-Antoine Olivier, Zu Lijun, Burnell, and American Jordan Wilimovsky.
In all, it was a 6-swimmer lunge for the touch.
Burnell was the second swimmer to be disqualified in the race. Kazakhstan’s Vitaliy Khudyakov was given a red flag on the 3rd lap, among 4 other yellow flags given out.
Burnell had a mouthful for the referees after the race:
I’m absolutely disgraced. This is pinnacle of our sport, the one thing that ruins it is the referees. A ridiculous amount of boats – a not needed, they’re giving yellow cards for absolutely nothing, and banning people 2m from the end when they’re grabbing legs all over the place.
I was second, behind the guy in front with no-one either side of me and the guy pulls out the yellow card! The yellow card is supposed to be for unnecessary contact. You’ve got referees out there who don’t know what they’re doing!
We’re all coming in a line, all the best guys in the water. I feel a hand on the back of my leg which stops me dead, I take a couple of strokes and he’s still on my foot.
The judges have ruined this. We’re going to put an appeal in but it’ll do absolutely nothing. It’s ridiculous. The grandest stage of them all, ruined by a couple of judges.
Does “disgraced” mean something different in British English?
Jack was DQed because he turned over and clocked Ous in the face after Ous supposedly grabbed his legs when he made his final move. NBC does not show it. Only the refs see it. I hope the public and media check the facts before they talk smack on the volunteer officials.
If it wasn’t shown then how do you know it happened?
I agree with Jack and it is the same in water polo. The refs are horrible! No other sports that I know have refs with attitude and control the game.
Since these races are becoming so close (hundreth od seconds) that they need to separate the swimmers coming in – meaning with maybe 300 yards to go you have cables or lane lines set up – maybe 16 narrow lanes and you HAVE to take an empty one and then sprint to the finish with a wide electronic board at end.
Yes and someone should also be responsible for calming the sea to keep the cables straight.
There are plenty of other pack racing events (cycling, auto racing, road running) and none of them that I know of need to resort to this kind of thing.
No expert here on open-water swimming, but it does share something in common with my other sport that auto racing, cycling and running do not – refs can’t really see much of what is happening underwater. In polo it’s OK – you give what you get. But, I can’t imagine what it would be like in swimming if I was sprinting for the end, exhausted, and someone gave my leg big giant pull and sped past me. For the open water swimmers – does that happen all the time?
If we make them turn left every few seconds we can call is Nasswim.
In 10 seconds from 1:52:34 (shot changed to aerial view in intervening seconds), Jack lost about 4m on the competitor in line with him. At the time, he was out on his own. How his Olympic dream could be snatched away like that and given DQ by judges is beyond me. What a farce.
My opinion may not be popular, but I think if a swimmer is “grabbing legs” and “swimming over another” that swimmer should be carded. Incidental contact is when two bodies side by side are grazing one another; impeding a swimmer is what we saw yesterday with the finish. We may feel really sorry for the person who is DQ’d at the end of a long race, but I’m telling you I’ve raced with some of these swimmers in open water and they can be pure idiots. They think they can get away with just about anything but when rules are cast onto them they get act like they’re innocent….I just simply don’t believe this guy- I’m sure he’s guilty. Sorry… Read more »
Maybe these guys were just faster than you?
If they pulled on my leg- then they were behind me
The ‘wronged party’ was not the leg grabber but the swimmer that had his leg grabbed and can be seen to be impeded in the footage.
Wondering what anyone’s thoughts are on Jordan Wilimovsky racing the 1500 on Saturday? Would that have impacted his race today?
Two fast 1500s including warmup definitely affected me. But Jordan is something else. He pulled it off very good.
I don’t think so. What I noticed is the announcers kept picking the nit on the Aussie going out so fast on his own. That certainly cost him when the field closed the gap and he was exhausted having swum it all on his own.
What I noticed was that in the group behind there were some swimmers, most notably Mellouli, who seemed to be doing the same thing. A group of 3-4 swimmers basically towed the last 20 with little to no ‘help’ from the group to go to take a turn at the front. Mellouli suffered the same fate…he’d swum the first 4K+ without any draft.
I was disappointed in the tactics of the main group.… Read more »
Great explanation ! Thanks…
I dont agree about the boredom but I agree about the defensive pack. The difference in biking is that a chasing group lay plans by talking. In swimming that is hard. Now noone really dared to close the gap because fronting is costing.
I also noticed a lot of boats crowding the course. At one point, one of them seemed to cross in front of the swimmers. Besides potentially obstructing their view, the exhaust from boat engines can be a problem.