(Beijing, June 1) The "Good Luck Beijing" 2008 Marathon Swimming Olympic Men's Qualification concluded at Beijing's Shunyi Olympic Rowing-Canoeing Park this morning, with 11 swimmers from 11 countries and regions qualifying for the Beijing Olympic Games.

Bulgaria's Petar Stoychev led the group by coming home in 1:59:13.8, followed by Hungary's Csaba Gercsak and Czech Republic's Ristislav Vitek. .

Also qualified for the Olympics by placing fourth to seventh were South Africa's Chad Ho (1:59:35.5), Venezuela's Enwin Maldonado (1:59:37.9), Brazil's Allan Do Carmo (1:59:38.8) and Argentina's Damian Blaum (1:59:39.1).

Finishing eighth was another Czech swimmer Jakub Fichtl who, unfortunately, could not go to the Beijing Games as the only Olympic ticket for the Czech Republic had been given to his compatriot Ristislav Vitek, bronze medalist at the race.

Same thing happened to the teams of Venezuela, Spain and Israel, as Venezuela's Rolando Salas (No. 10), Spain's Diego Nogueira (No. 12) and Israel's Michael Dmitriev (No. 13) all had to give up the Beijing Olympic marathon swimming competition after their their teammates had qualified with better results.

The remaining four Olympic berths were awarded to Isreal's Daniel Katzir (No. 9), Spain's Jose Francisco Hervas (No. 11) and Portugal's Arseniy Lavrentyev (No. 14) and Ukraine's Lgor Chervynskiy (No. 15).

At the 2008 FINA World Open Water Championships, the first qualification event for Beijing 2008, 14 athletes qualified either as the top 10 at that world fixture or as the continental champions. Due to the fact that only Australia took part in the World Championships last April, so the FINA decided to give out Oceania's only ticket at the Beijing qualification tournament. Thus, the number of the tickets distributed this time reached 11.