2019 FINA WORLD AQUATICS CHAMPIONSHIPS
- All sports: Friday, July 12 – Sunday, July 28, 2019
- Pool swimming: Sunday, July 21 – Sunday, July 28, 2019
- The Nambu University Municipal Aquatics Center, Gwangju, Korea
- Meet site
- Competition Schedule
- FinaTV Live Stream
- Entry Lists
- Results
Japanese National Record holder Yui Ohashi was a promising medal contender in the women’s 200m IM final tonight, that is until the 23-year-old Olympian was disqualified in the race.
Ohashi entered tonight’s final as the 4th seed, carrying a time of 2:09.58 from yesterday’s semi-final. Owning a personal best of 2:07.91, Ohashi finished with the silver in this race behind Hungarian dynamo Katinka Hosszu, the women who held the top seed once again heading into tonight’s medal competition.
But, Ohashi saw her medal hopes fade as she touched the wall at the end, only to learn she had been disqualified. According to Asian media, Ohashi was called for performing 2 dolphin kicks during the breaststroke pull-out. The athlete was visibly upset on the side of the pool, but she still has the 400m IM later in the meet, an event in which she also owns the Japanese National Record.
She finished 4th in the longer IM at the 2017 edition of the World Championships, but currently owns the fastest time in the world this season with the 4:32.00 established last November. She’ll be fighting off the likes of Hosszu and Spain’s Mireia Belmonte, although the latter has already missed out on advancement in 3 of her 3 events contested thus far.
Of note, Ohashi’s teammate Rika Omoto finished 5th in tonight’s 200m IM final, clocking a time of 2:09,32, although she’s been as fast as 2:08.64 this season.
Will FINA change the rules after Tokyo? 3 options in my mind:
1. Go back to the previous rule with no dolphin kicks at all – Unlikely
2. Enforce underwater footage and make it legal to review them after each race – probably the best option.
3. Do anything you want till the 15M mark – Doesn’t seem likely as well but you never know.
Co-sign.
it has to be #2, I mean this could be because of when I started swimming but a dolphin kick on the pullout feels kind of natural honestly. Letting people dolphin kick to the 15 mark would just go against the spirit of breaststroke for me, plus then we would lose watching some amazing pullout from the likes of Cordes who can get beyond 15 meters on the start
I agree. I believe that there should be a camera under each lane or two lanes and then there should be video referees who will decide if there were multiple kicks.
There are already cameras underwater (one per 2 lanes) that go the length of the pool wall-to-wall for confirming or over-turning on-deck calls. The technology is already in place. The bigger issue would be the political one of the ramifications of switching to video being used to initiate calls. Like VAR, it would definitely cause some issues (in the minds of those getting dinged), but it would also force swimmers to play by the rules.
Any note on what her time would’ve been before the DQ?
To clarify, she was 4th before the Dq? Thanks
Looking at video, it looks like she was 5th?!? Unless Margalis had a bad touch
Ok this is a joke. Fina either use replay technology to crack down on multiple dolphin kicks or allow it.
We have the technology to enforce this rule fairly across the board, yet we choose to use human judgement which often gives cheaters the benefit of the doubt to do the difficulty of seeing beneath water.
Like Ohashi deserves this DQ, but I’m willing to bet she was not the only one guilty of this infaction. Some of the most laughable moments in this sport have come due to the lack of/sporadic enforcement of this rule. Think London 2012 when they cut to the under water footage on the 10p breast start and everyone does 2 kicks, or… Read more »
This is kind of my complaint too (same for the NCAAs and the 200 breast with Siobhan Haughey). It’s not who’s doing it, who’s not doing it, but it’s how sporadically it seems to be enforced.
Look to see the race video!
There wouldn’t be a full heat of breaststroke semis…