Ferry Weertman won a ferocious battle for the men's 10km open water swimming gold at the Rio Olympics on Tuesday, edging Spiros Gianniotis in a frantic photo finish to cap a Dutch open water double. Weertman's triumph by the narrowest of margins - both he and Gianniotis were credited with a time of 1hr 52min 59.8sec - followed team-mate Sharon van Rousendaal's victory in the women's race off Copacabana beach on Monday.
But his win bore little resemblance to van Rouwendaal's victory by a margin of more than 17 seconds. Weertman, the 24-year-old European champion, reached up to touch the timing board a nano-second ahead of Gianniotis, a former double world champion who has competed in all three editions since open water swimming was added to the Olympic programme in Beijing in 2008.