2018 FINA SHORT COURSE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS
- Tuesday, December 11th – Sunday, December 16th
- Hangzhou, China
- Tennis Centre, Hangzhou Olympic & International Expo Center
- SCM (25m)
- Prelims: 9:30 am local, 8:30 pm ET / Finals: 7:00 pm* local, 6:00* am ET
- *The final night of finals will be one hour earlier, starting at 6:00 pm local and 5:00 am ET
- Live Results (Omega)
The USA men wrapped up the men’s side of competition at the 2018 FINA Short Course World Championships by knocking almost a second off of the course and American records in the 4×100 medley relay.
Ryan Murphy put the Americans in a good position to start, touching 2nd just behind Russian phenom Kliment Kolesnikov, 49.62 to 49.63, with both men a few tenths slower than their medal-winning times from earlier this week.
The USA faded to 4th after Andrew Wilson‘s 56.84 split on breaststroke, but Caeleb Dressel regained the lead thanks to a 48.28 fly leg. That split was right in line with his individual time, but was the fastest in the field tonight by over a second.
Ryan Held had the somewhat unusual spot of getting the nod on a finals medley relay leg despite not being in the individual 100 free, but the call appears to have been the right one, as Held held off Vladimir Morozov with a 45.23 anchor leg to give the USA the victory by .63s.
The Americans’ time tonight broke the meet record, which was set way back in 2010 by the USA, as well the American Record from the 2015 Duel in the Pool. Here’s a look at the comparative splits:
| USA 2018 | USA 2015 | USA 2010 | |||
| Ryan Murphy | 49.63 | Matt Grevers | 49.25 | Nick Thoman | 49.88 |
| Andrew Wilson | 56.84 | Kevin Cordes | 58.07 | Mike Alexandrov | 56.52 |
| Caeleb Dressel | 48.28 | Tom Shields | 48.07 | Ryan Lochte | 49.17 |
| Ryan Held | 45.23 | Nathan Adrian | 45.56 | Garrett Weber-Gale | 45.42 |
| 3:19.98 | 3:20.91 | 3:20.99 |
While the back and free legs are fairly in line with each other over those three races, there’s a lot more variability in the breast and fly. The fastest breast split comes from Mike Alexandrov eight years ago, but while Wilson’s split tonight may have the 3rd-slowest in the field, it was still substantially faster than Cordes’s split from three years ago, and in fact, made the largest margin of difference between tonight’s time and the 2015 relay’s time.
In a reverse fashion, while Dressel’s split tonight was dominant compared to the rest of the competitors, it was still about two-tenths slower than the 2015 split by Tom Shields, whose American Record in the 100 yard butterfly Dressel took down earlier this year
After how well Rylov has been swimming its interesting the Russians chose to leave him off this relay.
I know he didn’t swim the individual 100 but he won the world championship in the 50 and 200.
Kolesnikov obviously performed as well so probably a mute point.
In my opinion he could have broken the World record. He was on fire at this meet
It was probably strategic since rylov had the 200 earlier in the session. Might as well use a rested Kolesnikov leading off to try and get a bigger advantage
Dressel couldve done breast and conger fly.
Yes if they wanted to lose
Conger didn’t break 50 in the 100 fly individual; doubt that he could have gone 48 in the relay. Not sure if Dressel could have broken 56 in the breast leg.
Ryan Held is a relay beast!
Shatter is a bit of a hyperbole for a 400, but congratulations to all.
They took nearly a second off of it. That’s a lot for a relay record or any swim over 400m.
The Breaststroke leg of Andrew Wilson 56.8 was way faster than Cordes 58.0
I was thinking the same thing, I know people were complaining about Wilson and MA being “slow” but I’d take their splits over the 58
Is it Mike Alexander or Alexandrov ? His split was the fastest of the 3 breast legs Usa had anyway !
Alexandrov
thats what i thought – thanks for the confirmation
Wasn’t he the guy that got caught with cocaine on a drug test?
yes
The Bulgarian