Radford Looks to Rio

Kane Radford has been a regular on the international open water scene for many years now and over the past few weeks he has proven that he will continue to challenge the best in the world.
 
Radford began his post-world championship open water campaign in San Francisco with the famous open water swim – the Tiburon Mile. 

The Tiburon Mile was founded in 1999 and since then swimmers and swimming fans have converged in the Town of Tiburon to participate in one of the most competitive and prestigious open water swims in the world.

Athletes swim one nautical mile from San Francisco Bay’s Angel Island to the shores of Downtown Tiburon. They compete in one of several divisions including Elite, Age Group and Wet Suit – all vying for cash and prizes. Participating swimmers include Olympic and World Champion swimmers from around the world.

Radford has won the Tiburon Mile three times in past years, but this year Mateusz Sawrymowicz (Poland) and Olympic champion Oussama Mellouli (Tunisia) relegated him to third place.

Sawrymowicz won in a time of 23:46s, with Mellouli just behind in 24:02, and Radford rounding out the podium places with a close race in 24:20.

The mile is greatly affected by the tide and the cold as each swimmer attempts to pick the quickest route to the other side. This year the tide wasn't as favourable as usual for Radford, but he proved his strength with a third place finish.

Following the Tiburon Mile Radford competed in the open water World Cup in Hong Kong where he finished tenth overall despite his timing chip being ripped from his wrist with one kilometre to go. He had to stop and retrieve it as the rules state that each swimmer must finish the race with two transponders.

Swimming New Zealand Open Water manager Philip Rush was impressed with Radford’s performances.

“This was a good strong performance which shows with more racing Kane can be finishing in the top five regularly,” said Rush.

A strong plan has been put in place for Radford as he builds towards the 2016 Rio Olympics.

Rush commented,

“Kane will be in heavy training to qualify for selection for the Pan Pacific Championships later in the year. We will be looking at getting as many World Cup competitions under his belt as possible because race experience is critical in the 10km events.”