Women’s 50 butterfly complete race footage is courtesy of swimswam partner Universal Sports Network.
Swimswam / Jeff Grace coverage of the women’s 50 butterfly at the 2013 FINA World Championships:
After winning the 100 freestyle at the 2011 World Championships Jeanette Ottesen Gray of Denmark had a disappointing Olympics where seventh in the 100 freestyle and sixth in the 100 butterfly.
Since then she has had a coaching change and a shift in focus away from the 100 freestyle and towards the 50 and 100 butterfly as well as the 50 freestyle.
That change in focused paid off today in Barcelona where Ottesen Gray won Denmark’s first gold medal of the competition, winning the 50 butterfly in a new Danish record of 25.24.
Lu Ying of China the Olympic silver medalist in the 100 butterfly has not looked good in Barcelona, finishing 11th in the 100 butterfly and just sneaking into the final by one one-hundredth of a second in the 50.
She changed that tonight finishing second in the final in a lifetime best time of 25.42.
Olympic champion Ranomi Kromowidjojo of the Netherlands decided to add the 50 butterfly to her program, which is an event that she has not raced much throughout her career.
The freestyle specialist, did not look great earlier in the meet finishing third in the 100 freestyle did quite well against an experienced field finishing third in a lifetime best time of 25.53.
Since having a very disappointing Olympics Fran Halsall of Great Britain has spoken many times about her desire to right what went wrong. Although she did break the British record posting a 25.70 she finished fourth leaving Britain still looking for their first medal of the competition.
Inge Dekker of the Netherlands the 2011 World Champion finished fifth in a time of 25.83.
Melanie Henique of France finished sixth in a time of 25.96.
Egyptian Farida Osman finished seventh in a time of 26.17 just missing the national record of 26.12 she set in the semi-final.
Olympic 100 butterfly champion Dana Vollmer finished eighth in a time of 26.46.
