Van Rouwendaal wins gold in open water swimming

Paris. Dutchwoman Sharon van Rouwendaal claimed her second Olympic gold medal in the women’s 10-kilometer open water swimming event on Thursday after taking the lead from Australian Moesha Johnson (silver) in the long swim across the River Seine.

Van Rouwendaal celebrated her second Olympic triumph eight years after standing on the top step of the podium at Rio 2016.

She bided her time before attacking against the flow in the final stretch, rounding a pylon on the Pont des Invalides, before overtaking Johnson and taking the lead. She held her position in the final metres and crossed the line after two hours, three minutes and 34.2 seconds, 5.5 seconds ahead of Johnson. Ginevra Taddeucci won bronze for Italy in 2:03.42.8.

The race went ahead as planned after organisers said the water quality of the Seine River had reached acceptable thresholds.

Competitors set off from a pontoon next to the Pont Alexandre III at 7:30 a.m. local time and swam rapidly toward the Pont de l’Alma on a 1.67-kilometer circuit that they had to complete six times between the city’s two bridges.

They went downriver with the current, but had to go upriver on each of the return stages, hugging the banks to try to minimize the force of the strong currents. Johnson completed the first lap in the lead, ceding the lead to Van Rouwendaal, but regained it downriver on the fourth lap.

The two were joined by Taddeucci in a three-woman breakaway and opened up a gap of more than 30 seconds on the rest of the field before the crafty Van Rouwendaal took control.

Brazil’s Ana Marcela Cunha, who beat Van Rouwendaal to the gold medal in Tokyo three years ago, finished fourth.

The men will compete on Friday, but the completion of the women’s race without apparent incident will have been a relief for city authorities, who have been banking heavily on cleaning up the urban waterway. French authorities spent 1.4 billion euros on upgrading the city’s sewage systems, promising that the river would be clean for residents to swim in next summer.

However, water quality issues were a headache for organisers during the triathlon events, with familiarisation sessions cancelled and the men’s race postponed by 24 hours.

A familiarization session for the open water swim event was cancelled on Tuesday due to concerns about water contamination, but another was held on Wednesday.