Kazan, Russia, November 11, 2014 – Kazan did bring some shake-ups to the short course world rankings on night four of the 5-day Russian Nationals meet, both on the women’s and men’s side.
Danila Izotov scored the headline of night, but he did so within the semi-finals of an event. Izotov’s semi 100m freestyle time of 46.49 now ranks him as fourth in the world in this event; the final is set to take place during the last day of competition tomorrow. Isotov’s countryman, Sergei Fesik also cracked the world’s top ten in this event, now sitting in the number nine spot with his semi time of 46.90.
For the men’s 50m backstroke final, the current Russian record holder, Stanislav Donets clocked a 23.69 to tie him with Australian Ashley Delaney for tenth in the world. Delaney’s time was set at the Dubai World Cup stop back in August of this year.
The men’s 50m butterfly final also saw just one bump in the world rankings, with Nikita Konovalov now moving into ninth in the world with his Russian Nationals-winning time of 22.69.
For the women’s events, Valentin Artemiev raced a smooth 1:05.45 to not only win the event, but to position her as tenth in the world rankings now in this event. The women also had their 200m IM final during tonight’s session where Victoria Andreeva (2:09.18), Veronika Popova (2:09.24), and Ekaterina Andreeva (2:09.89) all finished within about seven tenths of one another, but none was fast enough to break into the world’s top ten for this event.
Two relays also took place during tonight’s session: the men’s relay team from Krasnoyarsk earned the win the 4 x 50m freestyle relay in a time of 1:27.37, while the combined team from St. Petersburg topped the field in the mixed 4 x 50m freestyle relay in a time of 1:31.66.
Competition resumes at 10:00 local time, where the preliminaries of the men’s 200m backstroke, 200m butterfly, 4 x 100m medley relay, and 1500m freestyle are set to take place. For the women, their preliminaries will include the 4 x 50m freestyle relay, 200m breaststroke, 200m freestyle, and 4 x 100m medley relay events.
For me, the highlight of the day was Evgeny Sedov opening a mixed 4×50 free realy in 20.85!Second in the world at 18!
That time is really,really impressive…