It was a huge payout for the winners of the 2013 BHP Billiton Aquatic Super Series in Perth and Rhys Mainstone, a FINA World Cup silver medalist – a western Australia native, who took home the big prize. Mainstone won comfortably in a time of 1:51:31.19, with Trent Grimsey (who broke the English Channel record last summer) taking second. New Zealand’s Kane Radford was third; coming off his recent win at the Kiwi’s world championship qualifier at Taupo Lake. The race took place on the Swan River in Western Australis. $15,000 was claimed by both the men’s and the women’s champions. With each of the age groups winners grabbing a nice $4K. One the men’s side the race featured some of Australia’s brightest stars in open water swimming including all three of the Grimsey brothers – Trent, Cody and Ridge. Team USA’s Alex Meyer finished 10th overall as he escaped winter in Boston to grab some summer sun and kick off his 2013 open water season.
For the women, Melissa Gorman – Australia’s two time open water Olympian, made it look easy and brought home the gold and the cash. Gorman was 9th overall and won the women’s division by over 5 minutes. Winning big prize money is no surprise for Gorman who took the titles and the $10,000 at both the 2011 and 2012 Tiburon Mile races. Second went to Heidi Gan with Jess Walker in the third postion
You can find complete results here
Thanks SwimSam – great video. I’ve got it on my radar for 2014!
It was a glorious day in Perth for this event yesterday! Perfect venue, tons of swimmers and a truckload of prize money both at this event and the pool event as well.
Swimming Australia did a fantastic job on both events! I hope we can get some Americans in this event the next couple of years! It was good to see Alex Meyer make his way down for the event.
Here is a video of the open water event…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTtKuslYsbM