Simone Sabbionni and Gabriele Detti have joined Mattea Rivolta in breaking Italian National Records today during the finals session of the LEN European Short Course Championship.
Sabbionni was the fourth place finisher in heat 4 of the men’s 200 backstroke preliminaries with 1:51.21, but managed to improve upon the race for the final by getting out faster. Sabbionni’s splits (25.26, 28.10, 28.58 and 28.81) were all faster than the prelim with the exception of the last 50 being just .35 slower, justifying his strategy. His 1:50.75 eclipses the 1:51.59 mark set in November 2009 by Damiano Lestingi for the Italian Record.
This swim was good enough to move up to third place in the final behind Israel’s Yakov Yan Toumarkin at 1:49.84 and Poland’s Radoslaw Kawecki who claimed the Championship Record in 1:48.33. This is Sabbionni’s second Italian Record, as he set the mark for the 100 LCM backstroke to 53.49 in April.
Gabriele Detti managed to hold off Norway’s Henrik Christiansen by .04 to take the Bronze medal in the men’s 400 meter freestyle final behind Hungary’s Peter Bernek (3:35.46) and Germany’s Paul Biedermann (3:35.96.) Detti cut three seconds from his previous lifetime best performance to take the Italian National Record in the event at 3:37.22. It is clear that Detti’s improvements came from the second half of the race, as a back-half split comparison shows from the prelim (28.09, 28.39, 28.44, 27.45) vs the final (27.68, 27.74, 27.35, 26.40). The previous Italian Record was 3:37.57, set by Emiliano Brembilla at Istanbul in December 2009.
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Rivolta has a lot more in him. I saw his semi-final race and he didn’t have good turns. He’s got lots of speed and certainly can swim sub 49, maybe even challenge the WR. He should be a clear winner tomorrow.