20-year-old Siobhan-Marie O’Connor threw down a gutsy semi-final swim during tonight’s session of the 2015 European Short Course Championships.
With Hungarian World Record holder Katinka Hosszu in the field, O’Connor held her own in the first semi-final of the women’s 100m IM, clocking a new personal best time of 57.59. The sub-58 mark surpassed the British National Record in the event, a time of 57.66, which O’Connor held from her silver medal-winning performance at last year’s Short Course World Championships in Doha.
Here is a split comparison between the O’Connor’s 2 record-breaking swims:
26.44/31.39 = 57.66 in Doha
26.38/31.21 = 57.59 in Netanya
In today’s heats of the event, O’Connor clocked a time of 58.32, so she knocked well over half a second between her morning and evening swims to crack the new record.
The 2014 Commonwealth Games silver medalist has raced her way to a 57-point 100m IM just 4 times in her career, including tonight. Her fastest of 2015 was the 1:00.02 she clocked early on in the year back in February.
Just one tenth behind Hosszu going into finals, O’Connor has set herself up nicely to go head-to-head with Hosszu who clocked a new championship record of 57.49 in semi #2 tonight to claim the top seed.
O’Connor also finaled in the women’s 50m butterfly race tonight, scoring a 4th place finish in the event. Her time of 25.69 was just .4 of a second off of the national record in that event.
