Ana Marcela Cunha has won a gold medal in the women’s 10km marathon swimming event at the Tokyo Olympics. Cunha competes for Team Brazil.
Cunha posted a time of 1:59:30.8 in taking the gold medal.
She previously won world championships at the 25km distance in 2011, 2015, 2017 and 2019. She had never won a world title or Olympic gold at the 10km distance.
She beat Netherlands swimmer Sharon van Rouwendaal by 0.9 seconds, which over the course of an almost two-hour race is infinitesimally small. She was only 4 seconds out of losing out on a medal all together.
Get off the sidelines and into the game
Our weekly newsletter is packed with everything from locker room chatter to pressing LGBTQ sports issues.
This is the seventh gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics for Team LGBTQ, and essentially guarantees that Team LGBTQ will have a top-12 finish in the medal count, if not top-10.
In 2019, Cunha announced her engagement to Brazilian water polo player Diana Abla, who has earned a bronze medal in the Pan American Games.
