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

2017 AUSTRALIAN SHORT COURSE CHAMPIONSHIPS

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.

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Eric Lahmy
6 years ago

I think it was for Bohl only a way to challenge his swimmer. If you look at the girl, she is fast. She swam 25s10 in the 50 as you say, and 54s94 in the 100 (silver medal, world juniors 1974). Perhaps is she too powerfully built for the 1500 (but when you look at Ledecky, you are not sure of what build is the best for the distance). John Rudd told us that, before her successes as a brastroker, Meilutyte envisioned herself as a freestyler and wanted to be a freestyler.

gregor
6 years ago

obviously a fun training swim!

John
6 years ago

18:13 breaststroke is pretty studly

Coach Mike 1952
Reply to  John
6 years ago

Are you SURE she did breaststroke?

John
Reply to  Coach Mike 1952
6 years ago

No Mike, it was a joke.

Skip
6 years ago

Ruta is training at USC now under chris mooney

Aussie crawl
Reply to  Skip
6 years ago

Sùnny coast yeww.

Uberfan
6 years ago

That is waaaaay slower than I thought she could go

science geek
Reply to  Uberfan
6 years ago

yeah I was thinking 16:45 or something.

Tea rex
6 years ago

So the moral is, I might be able to beat an Olympic gold medalist in swimming…

swimmer
6 years ago

A 1:00 in the 200 free? You might want to fact check that.

Teddy
Reply to  swimmer
6 years ago

It was a practice swim lol. Had to just once

Dudeman
Reply to  Teddy
6 years ago

no you didn’t

About Braden Keith

Braden Keith

Braden Keith is the Editor-in-Chief and a co-founder/co-owner of SwimSwam.com. He first got his feet wet by building The Swimmers' Circle beginning in January 2010, and now comes to SwimSwam to use that experience and help build a new leader in the sport of swimming. Aside from his life on the InterWet, …

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