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As reported by SwimSwam’s Jared Anderson:
MIXED 4×50 FREESTYLE RELAY – PRELIMS
World Record: 1:29.53 – Russia – 2013
The session ended with one final world record, bringing Saturday’s total to 5, the same as Friday night. This time it was the American contingent stamping their names on the record book with a 1:28.57 in the 4×50 mixed medley relay.
The race was outstanding. The entire top 4 made it under the previous world record mark, set by the Russian team at last year’s European Championships. Russia led early, with young star Evgeny Sedov crushing a 20.59 leadoff leg. That would have gotten Sedov a silver medal in the individual 50 free yesterday.
Brazil sat second, with Cesar Cielo going 20.65, two tenths faster than he was in the individual 50. The Americans were third, and that was even getting a strong leadoff split from Josh Schneider, a 20.94 that’s faster than his open 50 time.
Russia continued to lead through Vlad Morozov‘s leg (20.65), and Brazil held second with the U.S. running third, but Italy had the fastest 2nd split on a 20.44 from 50 free silver medalist Marco Orsi.
All four relays followed the conventional strategy of putting their male swimmers first to get into clean water, with the females anchoring. The Brazilians (Etiene Medeiros, 23.58) and Americans (Madison Kennedy, 23.63) started to close in on the third split, but the order remained Russia-Brazil-US with just one leg to go.
It was the youngest American swimmer who pulled off the big split to launch the team to the win. 17-year-old high school senior Abbey Weitzeil split a 23.25, tied for best in the field, to run down Russia’s Rosaliya Nasretdinova (23.96) and Brazil’s Larissa Oliveira(23.91). Weitzeil pushed her exchange as much as one can get away with, clocking in at -.02 on the reaction time (typically a couple hundredths of grace are given either way on relay exchanges). Still, she was equally fast through the water as the U.S. came from third place to win by more than half a second.
That vaulted the U.S. into the win at 1:28.57. Also under the old record were the Russians (1:29.13), the Brazilians (1:29.17) and the Italians (1:29.22), who also had a big-time anchor split. Erika Ferraioli went 23.25, just the same as Weitzeil, to nearly bring the Italian squad back from fourth into medal contention.