WORLD OPEN WATER WARRIORS WEATHER OSTIA STORM

ROME, July 19: Australia's open water swimmers will finally start their 2009 FINA World Championship campaign when the postponed competition gets underway here at Ostia Beach on Tuesday. IAN HANSON , who is covering his ninth FINA World Championship, filed this report from inside the Australian team camp....

A fierce storm on Friday night destroyed the event infrastructure - including the intricate timing system, forcing officials to delay the start of the event by three days.

The boardwalk, built out and above the shoreline, was left like match-sticks washed up on the beach as high winds and surf created havoc for Roma09 organisers and FINA officials.

There had even been some consideration of moving the event to a near-by lake but after much deliberation and consultation with weather forecasters it was decided to stage the five and 10km events back-to-back on Tuesday and Wednesday before a further storm hits the coast on Thursday night.

Competition will conclude next Saturday with the traditional 25km events.

"That's open water swimming for you - we have to be prepared for anything," said Australia's experienced National Open Water head coach Greg Towle.

"As soon as we heard the news that the events had been postponed I prepared our guys for the worst case scenarios.

"We have just gone about our business, kept training and waited for the final decisions.

"We ignored all the rumours about when and where and what times and just put our heads down.

"That's the only way to handle these kind of situations."

Australia's Telstra Dolphins have a proud history in world open water competition ever since the legendary Shelley Taylor-Smith (in Rome as the General Secretary of FINA's Technical Open Water Committee)  won gold and David O'Brien the bronze in the inaugural championship, swum on the Swan River in Perth in 1991.

Four swimmers - Beijing Olympian Melissa Gorman, defending 2007 bronze medallist Kate Brookes-Peterson in the women and noted five kilometre swimmer Andrew Beato and national champion and  1500m pool swimmer Trent Grimsey will wear the gold caps in the helter skelter 5km charge on Tuesday.

Gorman and Grimsey will then back up for the Olympic distance 10km event 24 hours later.

Grimsey will be joined by Western Australian rookie Rhys Mainstone in the red-hot men's field while Gorman will have promising Gold Coast schoolgirl Danielle DeFrancesco in the women's event.

The 25km will see Brookes-Peterson and Grimsey join 25km specialists Shelley Clark and 2004 world champion Brisbane's Brendan Capell.

"For most of our squad this will be the start of a long road to the London Olympics in three years time," said Towle.

"Who knows, we just might have a potential Olympic medallist in our midst.

"Every member of our team has done everything possible to be in the best possible shape.

"We have a team mixed with experience and youth and I'm excited about our chances."

For the rookies, understanding and coping with the vagaries and the uncertainties of open water swimming has been their first hurdle.

The rest now is up to them.