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Hau-Li Fan achieves top 10 finish in marathon swimming at first Olympic Games

Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games –

TOKYO, Japan – Hau-Li Fan, of Burnaby, B.C., achieved his goal of finishing in the top 10 of the Olympic Marathon swim event by coming ninth overall.

The 23-year old who trains at the High Performance Centre-Vancouver, had a great start to the race staying around fifth place for the first five kilometers. The second half of the race Fan dropped back from the leaders but held on to finish in the top 10.

“I had a great start, the first five kilometers were great, exactly how I wanted it to go,” said Fan. “A little bit disappointing I wasn’t able to make it to the end with the main pack but you can’t really complain about top 10.”

Fan’s ninth place finish ties him with Brent Hayden for Canada’s best individual male performance in swimming at the Games.

Germany’s Florian Wellbrock won gold after being way ahead in the lead for the majority of the race. There was a battle for second but ultimately Hungary’s Kristof Rasovszky took silver and Italy’s Gregorio Paltrinieri took bronze.

Wellbrock and Paltrinieri added to their medal count as they both won medals last week in the pool competition. Wellbrock took the bronze in the men’s 1500-m freestyle and Paltrinieri took silver in the men’s 800-m freestyle.

Fan just squeaked in to qualify for his first Olympic Games by finishing 18th at the FINA Olympic Marathon Swim Qualifier back in June. He punched his ticket to Tokyo by finishing as the top Americas swimmer outside of the top 10.

Fan took a lot away from the qualification event and worked hard over the last six weeks to jump from 18th to ninth.

“I think for my personality I’m always looking for ways to improve and I’m never fully satisfied unless I win the race and even then I would probably be able to find something to work on,” said Fan. “It’s a definite improvement from the qualifier. From barely scraping in to make the Olympics and now being top 10 in the world.”

Fan will evaluate this race to again find more he can work on to improve for next year.

“I’m definitely going to up my training for the next couple of months. I took a lot away from that race, a lot of learning and a lot of mistakes and you’re going to see me in my next race I will definitely be working on those,” said Fan.

“This is Hau-Li’s best ever performance at a world-level event. It’s an awesome achievement for him and it was a personal goal with us that he makes the top 10 and he’s achieved that,” said Mark Perry, Swimming Canada National Distance and Open Water Coach. “I think he got everything right today. He placed himself well and he put himself in a position where he could feed easily and in a position where he narrowed the field down and was guaranteed that he was going to finish in the top 10. […] I’m really proud of him.”

“There is definitely more from him. He’s young for the sport and he’s inexperienced. It’s the first time he’s put everything together,” said Perry. “We need to work on that, work on his conditioning, work on his speed in the future but also improve that consistency of putting everything together at the right time and as long as we can do that then hopefully the next three-year cycle rather than four will look good for him.”

Full results: https://olympics.com/tokyo-2020/olympic-games/en/results/marathon-swimming/result-men-s-10km-fnl-000100-.htm