Ruta Meilutyte Swims First-Ever 1500 Free at Aussie SC Champs

2017 AUSTRALIAN SHORT COURSE CHAMPIONSHIPS

• Thursday, October 26th – Saturday, October 28th
• SA Aquatic & Leisure Centre, Oaklands Park, South Australia
• SCM
• Heats 10am local (8pm night before EST)/Finals 6pm local (4am EST)
• Meet Site
• Psych Sheets
• SwimSwam Meet Preview
• Day 1 Prelims Recap
• Day 1 Finals Recap
• Day 2 Prelims Recap
• Day 2 Finals Recap
• Live Stream (Dolphins FB)
• Live results

Throughout her career, Lithuanian swimmer Ruta Meilutyte has maintained a relatively-compact competition schedule. Focusing primarily on the sprint breaststrokes that propelled her to stardom at the 2012 Olympic Games when she won gold over 100 meters in London.

She has occasionally-since raced a respectable 50 free (25.10 at the 2013 World Junior Championships), but only once per year in 2015 and 2016, and never near a best time. She’s also a good 100 SCM IM’er (57.68) – having won World silver and European gold in the event.

She has rarely, though, strayed far from her sprinting. She was a 2:00 in the 200 LCM free in 2014, but has no results in the 1500 (or recently in the 400) that we could find.

But with new adventures and new training in Australia for Meilutyte comes new competition. On Saturday, day 2 of the Australian Short Course Swimming Championships, she raced the 1500 free. The historically pure-speedster finished last by more than a minute-and-a-half, touching in 18:13.25. The race winner, Jessica Ashwood, touched in 15:52.29.

Bohl is a coach who developed a reputation for high-volume training while developing Stephanie Rice to triple Olympic gold at the 2008 Beijing Games. While it’s unlikely that Meilutyte will turn her focus to this event any time soon, this swim might wind up serving as an interesting early benchmark for a test of her changed conditioning in her new training.