Produced by Coleman Hodges.
Reported by Jared Anderson.
Hungary’s Katinka Hosszu made her first appearance of the night in winning the 100 backstroke on a big back half. Hosszu trailed 18-year-old American Kathleen Baker at the 50, but surged back to go 59.91 for the win.
Olympic champ Missy Franklin had an even better back half than Hosszu, and passed up Baker for silver in 1:00.03. Baker, a freshman at Cal, where Franlin starred for two seasons, was 1:00.04 to finish just behind in bronze.
Zimbabwean Olympian Kirsty Coventry, still challenging the world’s best at age 32, was 1:00.36, topping Mizzou’s Hannah Stevens (1:00.51) and Stanford pro Maya DiRado (1:00.77) for fourth.
Canada’s Dominique Bouchard was 1:01.11 for seventh, and U.S. Olympian Rachel Bootsma went 1:01.70 to take 8th for Cal.
Swimming in her second A final of the past half hour, Hungary’s Katinka Hosszu was unstoppable, winning the 200 IM in 2:10.69.
Hosszu is in the midst of some conflict with her federation, which she says is unwilling to adequately support her training needs, but it didn’t seem to affect her swimming much, as she won the race by more than a body length.
Also pulling a double tonight was Melanie Margalis, who got hot at the end of the race to sneak into second place at 2:12.67. Margalis was coming off a win in the 100 breast B final. She passed up Texas A&M Aggie Sarah Henry (2:12.77) and Zimbabwe’s Kirsty Coventry (2:12.86) for that spot.
Another Aggie, 18-year-old Sydney Pickrem, was 2:14.04 for fifth, beating in-state Texas Longhorn rival Madisyn Cox (2:14.05) by just .01 seconds. Just behind was Caitlin Leverenz (2:14.27) and 16-year-old Brit Georgia Coates (2:15.50) capped off that heat.
