In the 200 IM this evening at the Arena Pro Swim Series meet in Charlotte, Hungarian Katinka Hosszu, the Iron Lady, not only won her fifth event of the meet, but she also set a new US Open record. While we have seen some very fast swimming at this meet, this wasn’t a record anyone expected to go down tonight.
The previous record belonged to Stanford swimmer Julia Smit from 2009. Here are their comparative splits:
Smit, 2009 — 28.53/33.58/36.43/30.80 = 2.09.34
Hosszu, 2015 — 28.14/32.82/37.59/30.11 = 2:08.66
Hosszu outsplit Smit in every leg except for breaststroke, which is Hozzzu’s weakest stroke. This swim was just over a second off of Hosszu’s personal best, a time of 2:07.46 she swam at the 2009 World Championships.
This swim also gives her the fastest time in the world this year, which probably makes her the clear favorite going into this summer to defend her World Championship title.
2014-2015 LCM Women 200 IM
HOSSZU
2:06.12*WR
| 2 | Siobhan-Marie O'CONNOR | GBR | 2.08.45 | 08/02 |
| 2 | Kanako WATANABE | JPN | 2.08.45 | 08/03 |
| 4 | Maya DiRADO | USA | 2.08.99 | 08/03 |
| 5 | Sydney PICKREM | CAN | 2.10.08 | 08/02 |
She’s a very tough lady. She will be tough to beat in the World Champs. Also, Becca Mann placing 2nd in the 800 free and then not 5 minutes later placing 3rd in the B final of the 200 IM was quite an excellent double on her part. My gripe with this meet is the no shows for finals. The announcer near the end of the morning session was begging for the coaches to tell the meet organizers whether they would be there for finals so that they could put alternates in and fill the lanes. Despite this, there were still swimmers who did not show for their heat at finals and the lane was left open. In my opinion,… Read more »