Olympic Open Water Recap by Mark

Mark Warkentin reflects on his Olympic 10k race.

“At the beginning of the historic race, levity triumphed over tension at the starting dock.

Nothing of significance happened in the first lap of the race and all I really remember was trying to establish a good drafting position, which I believe I did. The race was physical from the start with a lot of jostling for position within the pack for the entire first lap. At the start of the second lap I was the unfortunate recipient of an elbow to my shoulder blade that, now 2 days later, still hurts.

I don’t know who it was that got me, but I must have made an aggressive retaliation move because I was given a Yellow Card a few moments later. The race official blew his whistle at me, held up a yellow flag and produced a board with #18, my number, written on it. The only thing you can really do is adjust your race strategy accordingly, knowing that a second infraction will result in a disqualification from the race. A Yellow Card makes the athlete more apprehensive at the critical moments, and there was one critical moment where I had to back down when I normally would have stood firm.

Going into a turn on the third lap the Russian and I were battling for position. I had an inside position (technically the better position) but the Russian was making it clear that he was going to try and angle me inside the course. His goal was to try and slam me into the buoy instead of going around it cleanly. I knew what he was trying to do and, under normal circumstances without a Yellow Card, I would have held my position. However, holding position would have required a lot of physical contact, and I didn’t want to draw the attention of the race officials. So, I backed down, lost my position, and had to try and scramble to get back into the thick of the pack.

At the start of the 4th lap the pace picked up tremendously, and this is when I knew that I was in trouble. My heart rate shot up, my technique started to flag, and my mind lost a bit of coherency. This isn’t abnormal to 10K races, in fact it happens every time, but in good races I can usually keep my composure at least until the 9,000 meter mark. I fought like crazy from the 7,500 to the 9,500 to stay in the race but I kept getting tangled with the Dutchman (the eventual winner) the Russian (previous world champion) and a whole bunch of other swimmers.

I scrapped my way through the last very painful 800 meters, and the closer I got the more it became apparent that I wasn’t going to win a medal. I won a small battle by out-touching a few of the other competitors at the finish line, but my 8th place finish was about 20 seconds behind the winner. I put my hand on the touchpad 1 hour 52 minutes and 13 seconds after the start of the race.

Looking back on it now I feel good about my race experience. No I didn’t win a medal, but I was in the race the entire time and I gave it my best effort. To wrap up the race analysis I thought I’d share the Olympic Creed:

The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as in life the most important thing is not the triumph but the struggle, The essential thing is not to have conquered, but to have fought well.”