Kane Radford produced a strong performance to finish 20th in a blistering men's 10km open water swim at the world swimming championships in Barcelona today.
The Rotorua swimmer dropped off the top group in the final 800m dash to clock 1:49.43, 28 seconds behind Spyridon Gianniotis of Greece who took out his second 10km world title ahead of Sunday's 5km silver medallist Thomas Peter Lurz of Germany and Olympic gold medallist Oussama Mellouli of Tunisia.
Swimming New Zealand open water manager Philip Rush said Radford had impressed in what he believes was arguably the strongest men's 10km open water field ever assembled.
"It was the best racing I have ever seen. It was hard and very fast from the gun,'' Rush said. "Kane was really targeting a top-16 finish and was very close to that. This field was stronger than at the Olympics last year and he definitely has improved significantly from last year when he could not go with the pace.''
Radford was in the leading group through 5kms, and was sitting safely in the pack as they went through the 7.5km mark in a slick 1:23.27, sitting alongside Gianniotis and Lurz just behind Mellouli.
