We reported earlier how newly-minted Short Course World Champion Jesse Puts scored a new 50 LCM freestyle national record while competing at the 2016 Amsterdam Cup. The 21-year-old became the first Dutchman ever to dip under the 22 second threshold in the splash n’ dash, clocking a swift 21.82 to overtake the previous Dutch record held by multiple Olympic medalist Pieter van den Hoogenband. With the Amsterdam Cup covering 3 full days at the Sloterparkbad pool (December 16th-18th), however, Puts wasn’t the only one who made some revisions to the Dutch national and age group record board.
Behind Puts in that men’s 50m freestyle race was Nyls Korstanje, a rising Dutch talent who is making a name for himself across the sprint freestyle events on the junior level. After hitting a time of 22.69 in prelims for a new Dutch 17-year-old record, he dropped it even lower to 22.55 to finish for silver behind Puts in the final.
Distance ace Damien Joly laid waste to two separate pool records over the course of the meet, beginning with the men’s 1500m freestyle event. Joly clocked a time of 15:10.62 to take the gold and also narrowly overtake the previous pool record of 15:10.73. That time was held by 2016 Open Water Olympic Champion Ferry Weertman since 2014. Joly went on to go double gold, adding hardware in the 800m distance, also with a new pool record of 7:59.23 to represent the only swimmer of the field to go sub-8-minutes.
2016 Olympian Marrit Steenbergen made headway in the age group record-breaking department, notching a new Dutch age group record for 16-year-olds in the 50m freestyle. After already clinching the 100m win in a time of 54.46, Steenbergen surged to the wall first in the all-out sprint, touching in 25.68 for the win. At just 15, Steenbergen was actually faster and holds that age group’s record at 25.27, a mark she hit at the 2015 European Games in Baku.
As the only sub-32-second swimmer in the women’s 50m breaststroke, Tes Schouten‘s time of 31.89 was swift enough to clinch gold in the fast and furious race. That time also scored a new national age group for 16-year-olds. She earned a similar result in the 100m distance of the discipline, registering a time of 1:09.49 to stand atop the podium in a new Dutch age group record for that even as well.
The grand finale was Arno Kamminga‘s Dutch Senior National Record in the men’s 200m breaststroke. Firing off an opening split of 1:03.19 and closing in 1:07.79, Kamminga checked in with a time of 2:10.98 to comfortably beat out the previous national record of 2:11.35 held by Lennart Stekelerburg since 2011.