Britain's open water swimmers continued their excellent performance at the World Open Water Swimming Championships as David Davies claimed the silver medal and guaranteed his nomination to the Olympic team in the men's 10kilometre race.
The Olympic and world 1,500metres freestyle bronze medallist went into the event with only one open water race under his belt, but showed no signs of nerves as he gained an excellent start and dominated the pack to take an early lead.
The British champion controlled the tempo of the race and as the swimmers approached the 2.5km mark he was closely followed by Olympic and world 1,500m freestyle champion Grant Hackett.
At the halfway mark the pack began to stretch out and the top three of Davies, Italian Valerio Cleri and Hackett began to pull away.
Hackett struggled as the race entered 7.5km and found the experience of Russian world champion Vladimir Dyatchin and German Thomas Lurz too much as he began to fall back through the field.
Davies continued his dominance until the final turning buoy where Dyatchin managed to just push past him to take the lead as they entered the final 500m. As they hit the final 200m Davies closed the gap on Dyatchin and they were swimming length for length but Dyatchin just clinched the gold in a time of one hour 53 minutes 21 seconds with Davies second in 1hr 53mins 21.3secs and Lurz third.
Davies said. "That race took a lot out of me, I feel like I have done twelve rounds with Mike Tyson.
"That was my first competitive 10km swim, in South Africa there was only six athletes competing, so the conditions here were perfect for me gain experience in the event. I am a rhythmic swimmer and so we planned for me to get out into the lead early on and get myself some clear space so I was well out of the pack.
"When I got into the lead I had no idea what was going on behind me, I just kept my pace and didn't stop to feed throughout the race. I did make some mistakes with my lines and my tactics, but these are things that will come with more experience of open water swimming.
"Dyatchin got me at the last turn and he used his experience to make me swerve towards the turning buoy. But I am pleased to be able to get that result while I am in the middle of heavy training."
Fellow Briton Alan Bircher was also trying to guarantee his nomination to the Olympic squad but failed to make an impact and finished a disappointing 21st with a time of 1:54.44.2.
Hackett finished in 15th place but was disqualified after deliberately preventing another swimmer from overtaking in the final 300m, this was his second yellow card of the race.
Davies' coach Kevin Renshaw said: "He needs to learn how to deal with the hard knocks of being in the pack, this is hard for a pool swimmer to learn as they are so used to competing with their own space. Nevertheless, he is a tough athlete and he puts his heart and soul into every race he takes part in so I know that he will be able to learn from this and improve for next time."
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