2021 NCAA WOMEN’S SWIMMING & DIVING CHAMPIONSHIPS
- When: Wednesday, March 17 – Saturday, March 20, 2021
- Where: Greensboro Aquatic Center / Greensboro, NC (Eastern Time Zone)
- Prelims 10 AM / Finals 6 PM (Local Time)
- Short course yards (SCY) format
- Defending champion: Stanford (3x) – 2019 results
- Streaming: ESPN3
- Championship Central
- Psych Sheets
- Live Results – Swimming
- Live Results – Diving
- Day 3 Prelims Recap
Virginia’s Ella Nelson lowered her own ACC record en route to a 200 IM silver medal, hitting a 4:02.33 to improve upon the 4:02.62 she set at 2021 ACCs. Prior to her ACC performance, the record had been held by Louisville’s Tanja Kylliainen at a 4:04.21.
Tonight, she touched in second in the NCAA A-final behind Stanford gold medalist Brooke Forde‘s winning time of 4:01.57 which was just off her PB of 3:59.26 from 2019.
Nelson and Forde were fairly close together for the first half of the race as Forde opened it up with a 55.06 fly split to Nelson’s 55.79. By the 200 meter mark, Forde was a 1;57.35 and Nelson trailed, touching in a 1:58.46. Forde pulled ahead on the breaststroke leg and brought it home with the freestyle to touch just under a second before Nelson.
Joining Nelson and Forde on the podium was Lauren Poole from Kentucky with a 4:02.73 for bronze.
This was Nelson’s second individual swim of the meet, having placed 5th last night in the 200 IM with a 1:54.74 while teammate Alex Walsh won the event in a 1:51.87. Nelson had a PB of 1:57.80 heading into NCAAs, bring it down to a 1:55.00 in the prelims and lowering it again with her finals swim.
Nelson’s third event this weekend will be the 200 breaststroke in which she’s entered as 5th seed with a 2:05.91.
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