The world's top two women marathon swimmers, the latest protagonists in our How Rivals Square Up feature, say that they pay little regard to what their rivals are up to for one very good reason: they have enough on their plates just dealing with what they need to do to remain queens of the 10km course.
In the red corner from Russia, Larisa Ilchenko, inaugural Olympic marathon champion and a woman with a record of gold medals in open water that is second to none. Between 2004 and 2008 Ilchenko won every 5km and 10km world crown she competed for, five titles over 5km and three over 10km.
In the blue corner, Keri-Anne Payne, Olympic silver medallist who stepped up to become world champion over 10km in Rome last year in a race from which Ilchenko had to retire without finishing. Payne goes down in history as the first Olympic pool swimmer (she raced 200m and 400m medley in Beijing 2008) ever to make the Olympic marathon podium.
Like the marathon men we featured recently in this series, Ilchenko and Payne are as exceptional as they are exceptionally hard-working. To those who cannot quite fathom what it means to cover 10km in about 2 hours, pop down to your local baths, try and cover 100m in 1min 15sec and then imagine doing that 100 times over without a break and sometimes in waters fit to chill, the spill of which is prone to make the uninitiated sick and disorientated.
To achieve the stamina and fitness required for one of the toughest tests in world sport, Ilchenko covers about 20km in training a day, while Payne notes her biggest set as being 18 x 800m on 10 mins (try that one, and see how you go) descending 1st to 6th x 3. "Getting through that session was a case of knowing that it would be a great achievement to finish it," says Payne with not a little insight into how great athletes deal with pain.
Both athletes in this feature note the importance of the men on the deck who set them a task and then help them to get through it with a view to the battle come race day.
"I've been working with Vladimir Nickolaevitch Zakharov since I was 11 years old. So it makes ten years already. He has a chance to see me more often than my own mother, it is like a second family," says Ilchenko.
Payne notes: "For me, my coach Sean Kelly is one of the most important people in the world, I have a huge amount of respect for him and vice-versa applies. I think that very important for anyone who wants to be successful. We understand each other so we know when to push things and when to back off." Kelly served as head coach to Britain's marathon team in Beijing and also coaches Cassandra Patten, world silver and Olympic bronze medallist.
The two rivals featured here have a very different view when it comes to how they might react if banished to a desert island. "I’m not of the suicidal type so I won’t swim off in the direction of the unknown. That would be quite foolish," says Ilchenko. But Payne is game for the challenge: "I would have to give it go, what would be the use of swimming for 15 years of my life if I didn’t try to swim to another island!"
