Our friend Wendy from "Oz" sent us this, snippet from RTE: "...Men's Olympic 1,500 metres champion Grant Hackett tried to qualify at the same event and he appeared to be targeted by his rivals. Hackett was disqualified after he tried to get out of trouble by swimming over another competitor's legs. 'I saw a couple of times people hitting him and swimming over him and obviously hurt him quite badly, and he just didn't have enough in the end,' said compatriot Ky Hurst. ..." [Link]
I don't buy it. I think open water swimming at that level is all about calculated retaliation.
4 comments:
I don't agree. Hackett's problem is that he's always marked as the #1 threat by every swimmer. Sheer numbers wears him down. Obviously there are additional tactical elements to deal with swimming open water versus pool events. What he needs is more race experience so he can develop suitable tactics to compensate. I think we'll see him swimming open water in 2012.
I think he is making excuses. David Davies (GBR), bronze medal in the 1500m in Athens, managed to qualify for the open water event in Beijing.
collapsed lung 2004 yet he won a gold medal
I believe he said he had an infection at Worlds
And here he said he was ganged mugged.
Though he pisses me off, I am rooting for him in the 1500m
The quote is from Ky Hurst, not Grant Hackett. Grant shouldn't be held responsible for what other people choose to say in the media. Grant himself has blamed his failure to qualify on not having enough energy at the end.
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