Another year, another great DownRiver Rip! This past Saturday, May 10, swimmers from near and far gathered at Robious Landing Park to race down the James River.

One of Richmond’s premier open water events, the DownRiver Rip is a 4.4-mile open water swimming race. Swimmers start from Watkins Landing and swim straight down river, with the current, to Robious Landing Park for an in-water finish. This year brought an exciting change: in lieu of the 2.5-mile charity swim, a wetsuit category was added which allowed those competitors to place in their own category instead of being categorized as exhibition like previous years. 

With 60 swimmers between the wetsuit and non-wetsuit categories, the turnout was a huge success! Securing his fifth straight overall win this year was James Crabb with a time of 1:10.40. Finishing close behind was Jason Fox with a time of 1:11.35, and rounding out the top three as the first female finisher was Megan McGrath with a time of 1:13.51. Age group/ division results are as follows:

Non-Wetsuit Category
Youth
Women: Bailey Pennington

Pups
Men: James Crabb
Women: Megan McGrath

Hammerheads
Men: Jason Fox
Women: Denise Letendre

Masters
Men: Heiko Millhahn
Women: Alice Phillips

Grand Masters
Men: Troy Lewis
Women: Shirley Loftus-Charley

Wetsuit Category
Pups
Men: Sean McCormick

Hammerheads
Men: Mathew Pascarella
Women: Leeanne Gordon

Masters
Men: Matthew Bower

Grand Masters
Men: Chuck Billingsley
Women: Deborah Harsh

For full results, visit: https://runsignup.com/Race/Results/53410#resultSetId-549025;perpage:5000

As always, a huge thank you goes out to our many volunteers and life safety professionals that helped to make events like this possible! 

Check out the full photo gallery below!