2018 KNZB Challenger
- May 12th-13th, 2018
- Dordrecht, Netherlands
- 50m (LCM)
- Live results
Olympic gold medalists Ranomi Kromowidjojo and Femke Heemskerk highlighted the field at the 2018 KNZB Challenger being held this weekend in Dordrecht.
Roughly the equivalent of a Sectional meet in the U.S., the event is drawing a handful of elite National Teamers, racing on in-season training, along with a number of qualified, high-level junior swimmers.
On the first day, Kromowidjojo swam one final, the 100 free, where she finished in 55.37. Even by standards of an in-season swim, that’s a bit off for her, and the slowest she’s been in any official meet since 2011. However, the unique way she split the race might explain the time: she was out in 27.13 and back in 28.24. Her split-spread is usually a reliable 1.5 seconds, so to get that down to almost a second flat indicates that this may have been a “push the back half” attempt.
Marjolein Delno was 2nd in 56.00, which is within half-a-second of her lifetime best.
Femke Heemskerk came out the winner in the women’s 200 IM, finishing in 2:13.77. That’s the 5th-best time of her career in an event where she looked to be seriously training for the world stage c. 2014 (she swam 2:10.41 in Eindhoven in April that year), but it has become more of a side-show event since. She’s now been 2:13 twice this season (2:13.19 in January in Antwerp), and has swum the event now at twice the number of meets as she did so last year (two).
Kim Busch was a double winner on day 1, topping the 100 fly in 1:00.67 and later the 50 breaststroke in 32.23.
The top swim on the men’s side came in the 200 freewhere Maarten Brzoskowski won in 1:50.10, which is about a second faster than he was at this time last year. Mathys Goosen won two events, taking the 50 back in 27.24 and the 50 fly in 24.27.
