SWIMMING: Brianna Throssell has won a hatrick of medals at the 2014 Youth Olympic Games after winning two more bronze medals in the women’s 200m butterfly and medley relay tonight.
The Western Australian won her first medal of the night in extraordinary fashion.
Taking it easy in the first two laps of the 200m butterfly, the 18-year-old from City Beach mowed down her competition to touch the wall third behind Hungary’s Liliana Szilagyi and China’s Yufei Zhang.
“Everyone goes out quite fast and my strength is the back end and I just need to know to work my strength and not get caught up in everyone else and how they swim their race.”
Clocking a time of 2:09.65, she swam three seconds clear of her heat performance and 0.2 faster than her best which was another win for the young athlete.
“I’m pretty stoked at the moment, a bronze medal and a PB I couldn’t be happier right now,” she said.
Taking to the pool again in the last race of the evening, Throssell formed part of the bronze medal winning women’s 4x100 medley team with Amy Forrester (Queensland), Ella Bond (South Australia) and Ami Matsuo (New South Wales).
The Aussie girls smashed their qualifying time of 4:11.22 with a time of 4:06.36 behind the home nation, China, and Great Britain.
Over the moon with her whirlwind first few days as a Youth Olympian, Throssell said it was a dream come true.
“It’s such an honour,” the triple bronze medallist said.
“It has been such an experience. I’ve never done anything like this. I think we all have kind of learnt to become professional athletes, think for ourselves, not relying on other people or anything or for people to do things for us. We sort of manage ourselves quite individually.”
For Sydneysider Matsuo it was her second bronze of the meet and equally exciting.
“Being able to go not once but twice it feels amazing. All your hard work- all our hard work is finally paying off and just being able to go in there with girls, there is no better feeling to go up there. A bronze medal- it doesn’t matter what colour it is, it’s still a medal and I think we all deserve it and I can’t be prouder.”
In other events, Matsuo and Nic Brown have scored Australia two more chances at a prized medal.
Matsuo swam another dazzling race in the women’s 100m freestyle semi, coming first and qualifying second overall behind China’s Yuhan Qiu with a time of 54.98, just 0.2 seconds behind the Chinese.
Coming second at the 50 metre mark, Matsuo kicked it into another gear for the final lap to propel herself into good stead heading into the final tomorrow night.
“I knew I had to get a pretty fast time to get into the finals so I just stuck to my race plan so I’m pretty happy,” she said.
“I just have to focus on my own race [in the final] and see what I can do.”
Western Australian Brown also has his eye on gold after coming second in his 100m butterfly semi to qualify fourth heading into the final tomorrow night.
Like Matsuo, Brown found more power in the trunk in the final 50m to come from sixth place and clock a time of 53.57, a vast improvement on his 54.04 time from the morning session.
Despite eyeing off another medal, the 18-year-old is showing wisdom beyond his years.
“I’m trying not think about it too much, I’m just taking one race at time, if I think about it I will start freaking myself out so I will just take one race at a time and see what happens.”
Day three of the swimming kicks off tomorrow at 1000 (1200 AEST) at the Olympic Sports Centre Natatorium in Nanjing.
Laura Judd
Olympics.com.au
@AUSOlympicTeam
