Pictured: Anna Auld (Credit: Mike Lewis)

After 15 days of pool and open water racing at the 2022 FINA World Championships, the final swimming event of the competition concluded this morning in Budapest, Hungary. 

Four Americans dove into the Lupa Lake Beach waters to swim the grueling 25K and resulted in Anna Auld capturing the top-American finish by touching in seventh in the women's event. 

Auld rotated around the top-10 throughout the entirety of the five hour, 10-lap race, even finding herself as high up on the leaderboard as second place at the conclusion of the eighth lap. She ended up finishing seventh in 5:26:25.6, just more than two minutes behind gold-medal finisher Ana Marcela Cunha (BRA), who captured her fifth world title in the event. 

Auld was followed by American teammate Kensey McMahon, who finished 10th in 5:30:19.1. The pair of Americans make for the fifth-consecutive FINA World Open Water Championships where two American females finished in the top-10 in the 25K. 

“The conditions were close to perfect – it got a little choppy towards the end, I think the wind picked up," Auld said. "It was super fun racing against those girls and seeing Kensey next to me on a lot of those laps, it just made me so happy.”

"I really wanted to just give everything that I had, even if that meant making some risky moves and hurting at the end," McMahon added. "I’m just super grateful to be here and to have my name on a USA cap and to have given everything I had.”

The men's event saw Simon Lamar and Joey Tepper enter the water. Tepper held strong in a podium position for the majority of the race, even taking the lead at various points, before eventually coming out of the race in the ninth lap due to medical reasons. He was treated by the medical team for a shoulder issue and later returned to all team areas and activities after being examined. 

Lamar would go on to finish 12th in 5:06:15.3. With the performance, Lamar becomes the fourth American to have swum the 25K in at least two FINA World Open Water Championships, joining the likes of David Heron, John Kenny and Alex Meyer. 

“It was a good race. I tried to cruise the first 15K, and then after that I started to pick up the pace quite a bit," Lamar said. "I felt like I was in a good position. I faded a little bit on the last lap – in retrospect, I probably should have used my legs a little bit more, but overall I’m really happy with it.

"Five years ago, I was in my first Worlds and I didn’t even finish the 25K, so I redeemed myself today by finishing and I think I did pretty well. (I) certainly can’t complain, I’m just really happy to be here again competing for the United States.”

The U.S. concludes its pool and open water swimming with 45 medals — 30 more than the next-closest country. The dominating performance is the highest medal count a U.S. team has ever posted at Worlds and will go down as one of the heaviest medal hauls in international swimming history. 

For more on the meet, visit www.usaswimming.org/2022Worlds.