2017 ACC Women’s Swimming & Diving Championships
- Monday, February 13 – Thursday, February 16
- Georgia Tech Aquatic Center, Atlanta, GA (Eastern Standard Time)
- Prelims 10AM / Finals 6PM
- Championship Central
- Psych Sheet
- Live Results
- List of Events
- Live on ACC Network Extra 6 – 8:30PM
Louisville All-American Mallory Comerford brought her A-game for Wednesday night’s 200 free final at the 2017 Women’s ACC Championships, which brought a highly anticipated matchup between Comerford and Virginia’s Leah Smith. Comerford won the race by over a second, clocking a 1:41.70 to break the former ACC Record of 1:42.51 set by Virginia’s Lauren Perdue in 2011. She also broke the former Pool Record of 1:42.42 done by Georgia’s Brittany MacLean in 2016, and lowered her own former Meet Record (1:42.79) by a second.
Comerford’s Splits by 50:
- 1st 50- 24.12
- 2nd 50- 25.94
- 3rd 50- 25.97
- 4th 50- 25.67
Through the first 100 yards, Smith and Comerford were separated by just 3 tenths, with Comerford leading in 50.06. Comerford started to widen the gap on the 3rd 50, and hammered it home in 25.67 to secure back-to-back ACC titles in the event. The big difference maker in the race was her final 50, as it was almost a full second faster than Smith’s final 50 split of 26.52.
Pure logic. Even terrifying.
Mallory Comerford swam a 1.41.12 relay split on day 1. Generally you add around 0.5 s/0.6 s to predict a flat-start time and you had something something around 1.41.60/1.41.70.
And she won the 200 free in . . . 1.41.70.
Magic.
Congrats to her. She improves slowly but surely. She has a perfect mix of speed and endurance to shine in the 200 free.
If she can convert her progression into long course then she will be quickly a major piece of the US women’s 4X200 free relay in the coming years.
200 free scY is a very confusing distance to use such times for prediction of 200 LCM results. This 20m difference, 3 extra turns and about 30% increase of underwater part of the race are making 200scy closer to 100m LCM than to 200LCM. The good time at 200y tell us rather about swimmer’s sprinting abilities than characterize him/her as middle distance swimmer. For example, Franklin’s 1:39 SCY was just 1:55.4 LCM, but she was still next to her pb at 100LCM. Ledecky’s superiority at 200m (if to take Sjostrom out of the picture) doesn’t find similar reflection in yards. Being a mediocre swimmer at 200m in LCM, Simone Manuel can be a major contender in SCY.
4 extra turns
I think Bobo realizes that it’s not a definite translation just a potential hence the “if she can convert her progression to LCM…”. While not all SCY swimmers can translate their successes into LCM, many do. So here’s hoping she’s one of the success stories because team USA needs more 200 swimmers.
I wouldn’t call it terrifying, just consistent.