Maria Fernanda Costa Scores Another South American SCM Record

2024 JOSE FINKEL TROPHY

• August 13th – August 17th
• Jurerê Sport Clube, Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil
• SCM (25m)
• Entries
• Day 1 Recap/Day 2 Recap/Day 3 Recap
• Results
• Livestream

Day 4 Highlights

Day 4 of the 2024 Jose Finkel Trophy brought another South American record at the hands of 21-year-old Maria Fernanda Costa.

After already logging a new continental record in the 400m free on night 1 of this competition, the Unisanta swimmer followed suit with a new benchmark in the 200m free.

Costa got to the wall in a time of 1:54.46 to take the gold, slicing .04 off the previous standard in the process. The former South American record stood at the 1:54.50 Larissa Oliveira put on the books at the 2018 edition of this competition.

Splits for Costa included 27.05/28.60/29.32/29.49 to get the job done, narrowly defeating runner-up Stephanie Balduccini.

Balduccini stopped the clock at 1:54.76 while Gabrielle Roncatto claimed bronze in 1:56.69.

After her performance, Costa told the Brazilian Swimming Federation, “I’m exhausted psychologically and physically, but I knew I had to get good results. I wanted to qualify for the World Championship, I wanted this South American record.

“So it was more about the mind than the body, so I’m very happy to have won. It was a very competitive race, with very successful athletes by my side, so I knew it was going to be very difficult. But I’m happy, happy to have represented Unisanta well and won this race.”

The men’s 200m free saw Kaique Alves from Pinheiros land atop the podium, registering a winning effort of 1:43.00 as a follow-up to his 100m free bronze. This marks Alves’ first-ever individual Brazilian title.

Fernando Scheffer, 200m free bronze medalist at the 2020 Olympic Games, scored silver in 1:43.75 and Eduardo Moraes rounded out the podium in 1:43.87.

Following up on his near-South American record in the previous night’s 100m free, Gui Caribe took the men’s 50m fly gold in a time of 22.54. That fell just .01 shy of the World Aquatics ‘A’ cut needed for December’s Short Course World Championships.

Guilherme Rosolen was next to the wall in 22.95 and Olympic veteran Marcelo Chierghini earned bronze in 23.06 for his Pinheiros club.