Keri-Anne Payne loses out on marathon swim medal

Payne, 24, was the favourite for the gold going into the race, partly due to the absence of Beijing gold medallist Larisa Ilchenko of Russia.

Payne took silver at Beijing and was also a semi-finallist in the 200m individual medley. Since then Payne has picked up gold medals in 2009 and 2011 at the Open Water World Championships.

However she was unable to keep up with Ristov who dominated the latter stages of the race. of Haley Anderson of the USA took silver and Martina Grimaldi of Italy picked up the bronze.

After leading from the beginning, Payne was in third place after the first of six laps around the Serpentine. She moved up to second in during lap two, with the USA’s Haley Anderson in front and Hungary’s Eva Ristov, Italy’s Grimaldi and Germany’s Angela Maurer in contention.

After the third lap Payne had slipped back into fourth, having taken advantage of the chance to take some energy drink. There were just four seconds between her and race leader Ristov.

By the end of the fourth lap she had slipped back into, four and a half seconds behind Ristov. She was in the same place at the end of the fifth lap – with one lap of the course remaining.

Ristov looked as if she was beginning to tire in the last 500m of the race, with Anderson and Grimaldi fighting hard for the gold. The Hungarian managed to hold on for gold.

About Keri

Payne is engaged to Team GB swimmer David Carry, and the pair will marry in Aberdeen next month.

She studied media-studies at the London School of Journalism.

Born in Johannesburg, she now lives in Stockport, Manchester. Her hobbies are netball, watching television and teaching in schools.

She does ten, two-hour training sessions and five, on-hour training sessions per week.

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