Open water swimming champion Ekaterina Seliverstova has angered the Russian swim team by training individually in the hope of qualifying for the London 2012 Olympics, head coach Dmitry Belov said Thursday.
Seliverstova won gold at the 2006 and 2010 European Aquatics Championships, both held in Budapest, but has struggled to post competitive times in the last year, finishing outside the top 20 at the 2011 World Championships in Shanghai.
This year she has shunned the World Cup circuit to work on her speed.
“Seliverstova’s working according to an individual plan. My reaction to it is negative, I don’t like it, but we’ll see what happens,” Belov told RIA Novosti.
With only one place available for Russia's female marathon swimmers at the London Olympics, Belov warned Seliverstova could herself pushed aside by younger, less heralded rivals.
“We now have three or four candidates among the girls for a single ticket to London. For example, we have Anna Guseva and Elizaveta Gorshkova, who are currently getting ready to appear at the World Cup round in Viedma in Argentina.”
To choose a representative for the Olympics, Belov said that he may hold a qualifying race over seven kilometres during a training camp or use results from one of the World Cup rounds.
“We now have three or four candidates among the girls for a single ticket to London. For example, we have Anna Guseva and Elizaveta Gorshkova, who are currently getting ready to appear at the World Cup round in Viedma in Argentina.”
In addition to her European titles, the 27-year-old Seliverstova has won three silver medals in long-distance events at World Championships, most recently in Rome in 2009 over 10 kilometers.
In 2007, she took silver in Melbourne over five kilometers indoors, and she came second the following year over the same distance in open water in Seville.
