Article and Photo courtesy of Jeffrey Powers
Medaling were Lindsay Vrooman, Ian Bidwell, Jack Collins, and Anina Lund plus William Powers who also finished in the top ten out of 237 swimmers from around the world. Overall Alex Meyer, Olympic Gold Medalist in 2010, won the event with & 2014 Fina World Champion Taylor Abbot placing second. Lindsay Vrooman, US National Swim Team member and member of Badger Swim Club in New York, had an outstanding swim to place third overall and first in the Ladies 5km event (58 minutes, 15 seconds). Vrooman’s club mate Anina Lund, who is only 15 years old, was second in the 5km race in 1:02:34 ahead of Barbados’ top female open water swimmer Lexi Clark (1:02:46).The team from Badger Swim Club had other successes as Ian Bidwell took third in the Mens 5km (58:19) and Jack Collins was fourth (58:20). Trinidad’s Christian Marsden, the 2013 winner, performed well but had to settle for fifth position (58:21). In an exciting finish Marsden was two seconds behind Bidwell and a mere second behind Collins as it was a race to the finish. William Powers finished 9th overall and 5th in the mens at age 15. Badger clearly has its sights set on attending the 2016 Olympics in Rio and is on the march having dominated the podium and challenged all those in the top that they weren’t going back to Larchmont without medals and having 5 of its swimmers finish in the top ten out 237 competitors. John Collins who has coached ten Olympians and whose swimmers have posted five world records said after the race, “Our team did very well but we will settle for nothing less than our swimmers being big fish in the big pond.” Badger’s performance at Carlisle Bay highlighted Badgers world class talent.
Swim Swam also wrote of Badger’s performance. Click here to read the Swim Swam article.
