2017 MARE NOSTRUM TOUR – MONACO
- June 10-11, 2017
- Monaco
- LCM
- Psych sheets
- Prelims 9am/Finals 5pm (GMT +2)
- Meet central
- Meet Preview
- Day 1 Prelims Recap/Day 1 Finals Recap/Day 2 Prelims Recap/Day 2 Finals Recap
- Results
Although the Monaco stop of the Mare Nostrum tour concluded today with several swimmers racking up impressive outings, we nicknamed the meet the ‘Sarah Sjostrom Show’ due to that particular Swede’s impressive ability to maintain full throttle, raw speed through multiple closely-timed events over the two-day affair.
Sjostrom competed in the women’s 100m butterfly on day 1 and the 100m freestyle on day 2, but interspersed between traditional prelims and finals of those events were elimination-type rounds of the 50m fly and 50m free, with the field narrowing down with each. Day 1 saw the field reduced to 8, then the top 4, while Sunday filtered out competitors to arrive at the final 2. The final pair then headed to the one-on-one duel. Even with the high-octane action persistent on both days for Sjostrom, she managed to fire off incredible speed off little rest, collecting meet records and world ranking slots in the process.
Just what did Sjostrom’s schedule look like over the weekend? Below is an estimated play-by-play based on the event schedule and when results were available, along with Sjostrom’s times from each splash.
Saturday, June 10th
9:00am Start of Prelims
9:54am 100m butterfly Prelim (57.50)
11:25am 50m butterfly – Round 1 (26.50)
12:00pm 50m freestyle – Round 1 (25.09)
4:30pm 50m butterfly – Round 2 (25.43)
4:50pm 50m freestyle – Round 2 (24.49)
5pm Start of Finals
5:55pm 100m butterfly Final – (56.20, Meet Record, New #1 time in the world this season, 13th fastest performance of all-time)
6:42pm 50m butterfly – Round 3 (25.70)
6:59pm 50m freestyle – Round 3 (24.49)
Sunday, June 11th
9:00am Start of Prelims
10:14am 100m freestyle Prelim – (53.30, Meet Record)
4:31pm 50m butterfly – Round 4 (25.26, Meet Record)
4:40pm 50m freestyle – Round 4 (24.28, Meet Record)
5pm Start of Finals
6:08pm 100m freestyle final -(52.60, Meet Record, 14th fastest performance of all-time)
6:24pm 50m butterfly – FINAL ROUND (24.90 Meet Record, New #1 time in the world this season)
6:48pm 50m freestyle – FINAL ROUND (23.95 Meet Record)
I’m really hope we’ll see some men that can be Sarah’s version or Ledecky’s version in near future.
It’s a golden age in women swimming. Only six rubber-suit world records left and hopefully four of them will be gone in the nearest future. Maybe this year.
Interesting, but I’ve often wondered if women were less affected by the super-suits. I’m not a scientist, but it was essentially all about increased buoyancy & decreased drag, right? Ergo, decreasing the effects of fatigue, due to lactic etc. Male athletes generally have more muscle mass so, presumably, tech-suits would have had an increased impact on men’s records? Has anybody researched it?
Coverage, IMO. Going from a shoulder-to-ankle suit to a shoulder-to-knee suit is less of a difference than being suddenly limited to hip-to-knee.
Absolutely. But, the science of the suits and how they aided performance, surely that also played an exaggerated role on men’s performances? For the same reason sprinters seemed to gain more from the suits than slighter distance swimmers of the same gender?
You are right. Women’s 50/200 Free, 50/100 back & 200 Fly, plus 4×200 FR. 200 fly is the roughest. Long shot 4×200 – depending on a number of things. Of note is that the Women’s USA NCAA’s this year had the 4×200 was the first & only event on the first night? The record fell… Putting it at the beginning meant it wasn’t any afterthought any more. On the men’s side from 2009 or before, 14 still, & tough for sure – 11 individual races plus 3 relays. Included in that mix is MP’s 400 IM LCM, akin to W 200 Fly. That last one is just out of reach right now.
I’d say Biedermann’s 200 free record is safer than the 400 IM record. At least Kalisz and Hagino were within 2.5 seconds, while Sun Yang was further off in a race half the distance in Rio.
At least one of them is legit. I don’t consider the wr to be 1:42.00, I consider it to be 1:43.14 by Agnel. I don’t think either the 400 im or the official 200 free wr will be broken next year. I believe Hagino has either peaked or near peaked. But Kalisz has potential for sure in a few years to break 4:03.84. The 200 free will probably last the entire decade, and longer.
The reason women have more Wr than men is because men had a drastic length reduction on their suits.
Sarah is going to sweep the 50/100 free and fly at WC!!!!
Given that Sarah IS concentrating on the sprints, it’s a safe bet that the 200 free will no longer be part of her lineup at the Worlds and Olympics. But while she may have lost a little in terms of the endurance required for three rounds of the 200 free in the middle of an 8-day meet, it would still be interesting to see what she could go for just one all out 200, in near peak condition. (Like, say, a week before the big meet.) She swims well year round, so it’s not as if she digs herself into a deep valley during heavy training. And she was never a drop dead sprinter, as she swam a very respectable… Read more »
What for? She did it once already by swimming leadoff leg in 4×200 relay. She never (correct me if I’m wrong) swam the first leg before. The decision that may cost Swedish team a place on podium. What’s she proved? What’s she achieved? A lot of talks and regrets that she is the Queen of 200 free and just let generously others to play with her medal. The talks and considerations that made her compete at Olympic Games next year at this distance. The decision that may caused her Olympic gold medals in freestyle sprint.
World Championships or Olympic competition isn’t like speed record race on dried salt lake where are only car, engine, speed, driver and nothing else.… Read more »
As we all predicted, dropping that 200 is paying dividends already. She won’t be far away for WRs in 3 events this summer. I think she’ll be hard pushed to break her 24.43 50BU – Looking at PBs in that outdoor race, conditions were rather helpful.
Predictions for Worlds: 23.7/52.3 & 24.7/55.4
Speaking of 50 fly, the Swedish Nationals are hosted at that same outdoor venue this year, only a few weeks before the Worlds. If not WR I could at least see 24.5-24.6.
I don’t expect her to break any fly record this summer. She’s got more enough to ensure gold medals but without any fly focus the times are hard to beat. If she does it will be thanks to improved starts and turns.
I think you are right about the freestyles though, I see those times happening.
The James Gibson EFFECT. Can’t wait to see his other charges, VDB, Le CLos, Phelps, Thorpe race this summer. He coaches them all ya?
phelps and thorpe? no….
James Gibson effect? She is training with Johan Wallberg, as far as I know…
Correct. He is Therese Alshammar’s former coach and husband for those that didn’t know. Has improved Sjostrom’s starts leaps and bounds in a very short amount of time.
Due to award ceremonies her chances for warm up and warm down were reduced a lot, especially on Sunday.
She’s always fast in season but these performances are crazy. Hopefully for her she doesn’t peak too early. Very good decision from her to drop the 200 free from her line-up of events.
Yea, I don’t think she can control the 200 now with improvements from Ledecky and other swimmers.
24.9 fly and 23.9 free are very impressive.
What a beast, much like a certain Iron Lady…
I think that Hosszu will be flattered to be compared to Sarah Sjostrom. Not the other way.
Are you kidding me. Hozzu and Sarah are both great, but Hozzu is the iron lady.
“Iron”? Should you have quantitative measure of “ironness” it will be immediately clear to you how wrong you are with your statement.
Performance? Hosszu is just above average in some strokes. Sjostrom is world leader in fly and freestyle.
Greatness? I don’t know how to measure it.
Money? I think Sarah will get much more. And she doesn’t need to swim bunch of junk meets for that.