Ivan Puskovitch completed in the Men’s 10 km event earlier this morning, finishing with a time of 1 hour, 57 minutes and 52.5 seconds.
Puskovitch spent his senior season with the Mountaineers when he became the fifth American male in history to qualify for the Olympics in open water swimming since the event was added to the Olympics in 2008. He is also the first male from the WVU swimming and diving program to qualify for the Olympics. He qualified for the marathon swimming event after placing 14th in the men’s 10 km at the 2024 World Aquatics Championships in Doha, Qatar. His time there was 1:48:54.40.
In the event itself, Puskovitch finished 19th out of 25 competitors earlier this morning. The gold medalist was Hungary’s Kristof Rasovszky, who finished the 10 km race in 1:50:52.7., seven minutes faster than Puskovitch. The podium was rounded out by Germany’s Oliver Klemet (1:50:54.8) and Hungary’s David Bethlehem (1:51:09.0). The majority of racers finished at least two minutes behind Rasovsky’s time.
Puskovitch himself never strayed from his initial half-lap placement of 20th. He rose to as high as 17th place entering the 5th of 6 laps in the event, but ended up beating out the Czech Republic’s Martin Straka by 0.4 seconds to take 19th place instead of 20th.
