2018 SC World Championships: Day 6 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 sixth and final prelim session from Hangzhou will be very light with only two individual events on the slate in the men’s 200 back and the women’s 200 breast. Additionally, we’ll see prelim heats in the women’s 4×50 free relay at the beginning of the session, and the 4×100 medley for both genders at the end.

The 200 back will feature 50 back winner Evgeny Rylov and 400 free champ Danas Rapsys in heat 2, 100 back gold medalist Ryan Murphy, his American teammate Jacob Pebley and reigning LC 100 back world champ Xu Jiayu in heat 3, and then three-time defending champion Radoslaw Kawecki and world record holder Mitch Larkin in the final heat. This will be Pebley’s first individual race of the competition after only swimming in the heats of the 800 free relay thus far.

The women’s 200 breast is pretty wide open with no clear-cut favorite coming in. Ye Shiwen, Jessica Vall and Maria Temnikova are the top-3 seeds all entered with times in the 2:18 range, while Americans Bethany Galat and Annie Lazor will both have an opportunity to do some damage out of heat 2. Ruta Meilutyte is the lone individual scratch from the session in this event.

None of the medal contending teams should have a problem advancing out of any of the three relay prelims. A total of five relays have dropped out of the three events, and you can read about those here.