SWIMMING: Australia has had another successful morning at the Olympic Sports Centre Natatorium in Nanjing, qualifying for another two semi finals (women’s 50m butterfly, men’s 50m freestyle) and two finals (women’s 200m backstroke, men’s 4x100m freestyle relay) tonight.
Queenslander Amy Forrester was among the successful Aussie’s in this morning’s session finishing first in her 200m backstroke event, qualifying second overall, with a time of 2:12.85.
Having just gone over her PB of 2:11.00, Forrester says she is confident she can better her time and beat the American Hannah Moore to the post after she qualified fastest with 2:11.02.
“That swim felt fairly easy, well as easy as the 200 gets so hopefully I will be able to improve on the small things like my starts, turns and underwater work and hopefully improve on my time tonight,” she said.
The 200m event is sixteen-year-old’s main event and she says she feels lucky she had a chance to warm up in the 100m on day one and the women’s 4x100m medley relay yesterday which she won bronze in.
“My coach and I believe you swim yourself into the meet especially being in a new country and stuff so I am really happy that I had other events before this race.”
Also vying for a medal is the men’s 4x100m freestyle relay team consisting of Kyle Chalmers, 16, Grayson Bell, 17, Nic Groenewald, 17, and Nic Brown, 18.
The boy’s had a tough swim finishing sixth in their heat and just snagging the sixth qualifying spot for the final, clocking a time of 3:28.25.
“For a heat swim that hurt a lot which isn’t really that surprising so hopefully we can step up and put a better swim in tonight,” Brown said.
“I put a lot into that one but just the fact that it was a heat it probably hurt a little bit more than normal but hopefully we can get a bit faster tonight,” Groenewald added.
Russia and Italy left the other teams in their wake touching the wall just shy of 3.25 minutes but the Australians say they are just focusing on their own race and achievements with Queenslander Bell swimming a PB of 53.04 seconds for the team.
“If we get there we get there, we are trying to focus on the performance rather than the outcome,” Groenewald said.
“Being a part of this time is awesome, I think it is a really good vibe this team has and I think we work really well together,” Chalmers said.
“ Being a part of a relay team is always a pretty special thing but when you are with boys like this that you are really close with it’s really good.”
Ami Matsuo and Brown will also represent Australia tonight in gold medal races in the women’s 100m freestyle and men’s 100m butterfly respectively after both qualifying in the semi’s last night.
In other events, three-time bronze medallist Brianna Throssell from Western Australia qualified seventh in the women’s 50m butterfly ahead of the semi-finals tonight along with South Australian Chalmers who qualified for the men’s 50m freestyle semi.
Unfortunately sixteen-year-old Ella Bond from South Australia just missed out of the women’s 200m breaststroke semi after qualifying 18th.
The second session of the swimming will commence at this evening at 1880 (2000 AEST).
You can watch tonight’s session on the IOC’s YouTube channel or at Olympic.org.
