2019 World Para Swimming World Series – Singapore
- May 10-12, 2019
- OCBC Aquatic Centre, Singapore
- Results: https://www.worldparaswim.sg/
After already downing the 50 and 100 free world records over the first two days of the meet, New Zealand’s Sophie Pascoe hit yet another world record on Sunday, the final day of the Singapore WPS World Series stop.
Pascoe, 26, went 2:25.22 to break the SM9 world record in her signature event, the 200 IM. The previous record was 2:27.83; interestingly, Pascoe also owns the SM10 world record at 2:24.90, as she was recently classed down. Russia’s S14 Valeriia Shabalina took silver in 2:20.14, and American SM8 Jessica Long nabbed the bronze in 2:43.15.
Japan’s SM14 Keichi Nakajima won the men’s race in 2:15.61. Taking second was Hong Kong’s Long Tin Chan (S14) in 2:16.30, and in third was SM14 Lawrence Sapp (USA) in 2:20.97.
Malaysia’s Brenda Anellia (S4) hit a new Asian record in prelims of the women’s 50 fly (1:11.92) but then shaved more than two seconds off that time in finals, going 1:09.72 for sixth place overall. Canada’s Tess Routliffe (S7) won the event in 37.69 and Russia’s S7 Ani Palian was second in 37.86. Taking third was China’s Daomin Liu (S6) in 38.91. In the men’s race, China’s Jingang Wang (S6) went 30.88 for the gold. Singapore’s S7 Wei Soong Toh took silver in 32.40 and bronze went to Russia’s S6 Andrei Granichka in 33.90.
Turkey’s Sumeyye Boyaci (S5) won the women’s 50 back in 45.88 and S2 Pin Xiu Yip (Singapore) was second in 1:05.29. Taking third was S5 Mayumi Narita (Japan) in 47.85. S4 Cameron Leslie (New Zealand) won the men’s race in 43.22. S5 Thanh Tung Vo (Vietnam) was second in 39.76 and Russia’s Roman Zhdanov (S4) was third in 46.38.
Sophie is an exceptional athlete. That’s some fast swimming off a hard block of training. Looking forward to seeing what she can do rested later this year.
Can someone explain how Sophie has been classed down? I assume her disability hasn’t changed – I just don’t really understand how it works. Particularly after seeing the coverage of Ollie Hynd (who I think has a degenerative condition) having been classed up?
In short, no. Your question can’t be answered by anyone without access to the classification sheet. It’s also not helpful to compare to another athlete with completely different testing. Also the technical assessment is now completely different than it would have been when she last went to classification. For better or for worse sportclasses 1-10 have fundamentally different borders than they did before.
Regardless – a plausible scenario might run like this. Media reports have her missing part of a leg (and probably significant muscle damage) after being run over by a lawn mower.
Limb loss is scored by the proportion of the remaining limb. Ignore the muscle damage for now as we don’t know what that is.
Any lower… Read more »
Thanks for your response. Your last paragraph is unnecessary. I have no connection with anyone involved and all I see are the various articles published on here about para-swimming. It’s not a very straightforward system to understand and it’s a perfectly reasonable question.
NZL tried to get Sophie reclassified many years ago. It’s common knowledge that neither she nor they thought she should be S10. I do think the S10 class pushed her though. Hopefully she’ll now push the S9 class which is considerably light and has been for years. I agree with you raising Olly Hynd as a comparison. His reclassification was a cruel one as was Brasils. They all swim together in mixed disability classes so in my opinion it was perfectly reasonable to compare Hynd and Pascoe recent S9 classifications. If Hynd isn’t S8 then there are a few others in that class who ought to be classed up too. BobC was perhaps a touch rude and too eager to… Read more »
I don’t think she belongs competing as a 9. People seemed to complain about Konkoly being a 9 and Pascoe is a lot faster and in more events. Classifying swimmers down and then they immediately crush world records? Do people thinks thats a good look for the sport? I am totally ignoring the stupid classification system in my analysis and just going based upon the visual of this. Same with Alice Tai as an 8
I understand your point of view TAA and perhaps you are right that visually it’s not appealing, I think 4 or 5 WRs since February? But, what if Sophie had originally been classed S9 along with du Toit, a through the knee single leg amputee? She and du Toit would have dominated the S9 class. In fact, du Toits 400fr WR is some 7s faster than Rivards S10. Alice Tai, I’m not sure why she was classed down (whilst Hynd and others were classed up). She was also a good addition to the S9 class and would at least be competition to Sophie in the backstroke event. I believe that Sophie is now where she always should have been and… Read more »