2018 SC World Championships: Day 5 Prelims Preview

2018 FINA SHORT COURSE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS

• Tuesday, December 11th – Sunday, December 16th
• Hangzhou, China
• Tennis Centre, Hangzhou Olympic & International Expo Center
• SCM (25m)
• Prelims: 9:30 am local, 8:30 pm ET / Finals: 7:00 pm* local, 6:00* am ET
• *The final night of finals will be one hour earlier, starting at 6:00 pm local and 5:00 am ET
• Live Results (Omega)

The penultimate preliminary session from Hangzhou will be a very busy one with nine different events scheduled. We’ll see the men’s 4×50 medley relay, the 400 IM, 100 free, 50 breast and 1500 free, along with the women’s 200 IM, 100 fly, 50 free and 4×200 free relay.

Among the highlights will be Japan’s Daiya Seto, who’s coming off breaking the world record in the 200 fly, beginning his hunt for a four-peat in the 400 IM, and he’s definitely got another WR in his sights. Seto’s best time stands at 3:56.33, less than a second off of Ryan Lochte‘s 3:55.50, and his schedule has been much lighter than he’s accustomed to with only two individual entries at this meet.

The home crowd will be behind Wang Shun in this one, and he’s the only potential threat to dethrone Seto. Wang won the 200 IM earlier, defending his title, and is the only other swimmer in the field who has been under 4:00 in 2018.

The men’s 100 free will be full of some of the top male performers of the meet so far, with 50 free champ Vlad Morozov, 200 free gold medalist Blake Pieroni, 100 fly winner Chad Le Clos, and Caeleb Dressel who has been on four world record setting relays so far and also has a pair of individual silvers. A key note here is that at the 2016 Championships in Windsor, both Morozov and Le Clos missed the semi-finals after coming in as the top-2 seeds.

Here, Morozov is the top seed after missing the world record by .01 on the World Cup, and then Pieroni is 2nd, Cameron McEvoy 3rd, and then Le Clos is 6th. Dressel, entered with his best 2018 LC time of 48.27, isn’t even in the circle-seeded heats and finds himself out in lane 0 of heat 9 (out of 12). Had he been entered with the American Record he went leading off the 400 free relay he’d be 2nd overall.

Cameron van der Burgh is also a major storyline here in the 50 breast, after announcing his retirement once the meet is over. He won the 100 breast early in the meet, and is certainly the favorite here after that.

In the men’s mile, Mykhailo Romanchuk of Ukraine and Gregorio Paltrinieri of Italy will finally be in action after only entering this event for the meet, and they’ll swim side-by-side in the 3rd and final heat. Paltrinieri is the world record holder and will be looking to regain his 2014 crown that he lost to Park Tae Hwan in Windsor (winning silver), and Romanchuk is the only swimmer in history to crack 14:20 on three separate occasions. His PB of 14:14.59 ranks him 3rd all-time behind Paltrinieri (14:08.06) and Aussie legend Grant Hackett (14:10.10).

On the women’s side, Katinka Hosszu will kick off her push to defend both of her titles in the 200 IM and 100 fly, while American Kelsi Dahlia will look to finally get a win over the Hungarian. In Windsor, Hosszu beat out Dahlia for gold in the 100 fly by one-tenth of a second, and earlier in the meet in the 200 fly she beat her by 0.13. Hosszu also won gold with Dahlia taking silver in the 200 in 2016.

In the 50 free, Ranomi Kromowidjojo looks nearly unstoppable after already winning the 100 free and 50 fly. She’ll be looking for her 3rd straight title and 4th overall.