The 23-year-old swimmer won the gold medal in the 10k open water event at the Fina World Championships in Shanghai to seal her spot.
The top 10 finishers in the race automatically earned Olympic places.
The 2009 world champion and 2008 Olympic silver medallist completed the course at Jinshan City Beach in two hours, one minute and 58.1 seconds.
Italy’s Martina Grimaldi finished second, while Greece’s Marianna Lymperta was third.
It was Great Britain’s first medal of the competition in China and Payne can now turn her attention to the pool programme, where she has qualified for the 1500m freestyle and 4x200m relay(BBC)
England captain Andrew Strauss is eager to complete a series victory against Sri Lanka at Lord’s in the second Test, which starts on Friday. His side lead the three-match series 1-0 after Sri Lanka’s dramatic second-innings collapse handed them victory by an innings and 14 runs in Cardiff.
Strauss’ team have not lost a Test series since a 1-0 defeat by West Indies at the start of 2009.
“We’re very determined to make it 2-0 and win the series now,” said Strauss.
“We’re pretty buoyant after the way we managed to get the victory at the end there in Cardiff but we’re also aware that it’s right back to square one again here at Lord’s.
“It’s not often you win a Test match in that manner – most of the Test matches you win come from three or four days of very hard work getting yourself in the position to win so we’ve got to get right back to square one here and I think the guys are excited to do that.
A fourth Pakistan cricketer was reportedly being investigated over alleged match-fixing Sunday, with fresh betting scam claims casting a shadow over the country’s one-day match against England-report-JNW
American halfpipe bronze medalist Scotty Lago volunteered to leave the Olympics on Friday after risque pictures of him showed up on the Internet.
Lago, who was awarded his bronze medal Thursday night, was at a party, wearing a Team USA T-shirt when somebody snapped a photo of a woman kneeling below Lago’s waist to kiss his medal. That picture, and another showing him sticking the medal in the woman’s mouth while teammate Greg Bretz looks on, appeared Friday on the TMZ Web site.
Lago apologized to officials at the U.S. Olympic Committee and the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association and decided to go home-Foreign News Agencies-JNW
