Baker Busts Out Near-Lifetime Best 200 IM To Open FFN Golden Tour – Nice

2020 FFN GOLDEN TOUR CAMILLE MUFFAT – NICE

• Friday, February 7th – Sunday, February 9th
• Piscine Jean Bouin, Nice
• LCM (50m)
• Meet Information
• SwimSwam Preview
• Results

American Olympic medalist Kathleen Baker already made her presence known here on day 1 of the FFN Golden Tour Camille Muffat meet in Nice, France, wrangling up two top seeds from the heats. The Team Elite star produced a morning 200m IM swim of 2:11.31 to land lane 4 in that event, followed by a solid 1:00.03 top mark in the 100m back just 2 events later.

Baker would wind up scratching the 100m back final, thereby forfeiting her morning monetary earnings, with the 22-year-old instead having designs on going full-throttle on the women’s 200m IM event.

Putting up splits of 27.90/31.53 (59.43)/37.17/32.15 (1:09.32), Baker stopped the clock at a time of 2:08.75 to take the 200m IM gold tonight in the 2nd best time of her career. This performance checks-in as just the 2nd sub-2:10 result ever for Baker, whose other occasion is represented by her 2:08.32 PB logged at the 2018 U.S. Summer Nationals.

Baker put on a show tonight in this race, beating the next-closest swimmer of Katinka Hosszu by almost 3 seconds. Reigning World Champion in this event, Hosszu touched in 2:11.72 for runner-up, while home nation swimmer Fantine Lessafre rounded out the top 3 200m IMers in 2:12.32.

For perspective, Baker’s 2:08.75 time tonight would have placed 4th in Gwangju last year. She is now the fastest American this season, overtaking Melanie Margalis’ time of 2:08.84 from U.S. Winter Nationals. Baker also becomes the 3rd fastest performer in the world this season.

Team Elite squadmates Michael Chadwick and Kendyl Stewart were also in the pool tonight, with the former taking bronze in the 50m breast in 28.14. Winning that sprint event was Frenchman Theo Bussiere, who touched in 27.83, while Turkish athlete Emre Sakci also got under 28 seconds in 27.98.

Stewart topped the women’s 100m fly podium, producing a mark of 58.72. She led the leats in 59.01 before splitting 27.11/31.51 to produce 1 of just 2 sub-59 second outings. Behind her was Belarusian national record holder Anastasiya Shkurdai who posted 58.87, while Hosszu collected bronze in 59.45.

Hosszu had earlier raced the 50m free as well, winding up 8th in 25.87. It was Melanie Henique of France who got the job done for gold in the splash n’ dash, registering a winning time of 24.86.

Michelle Coleman of Sweden was next in line in 24.96 for silver, while Charlotte Bonnet notched bronze in 25.87.

Sans Baker in the 100m back final, Coleman took advantage of the absence and raced to the win in 1:01.03. Hosszu was in the water yet again, clocking 1:04.59 for a far-behind 8th place finish in the 1back event.

Additional Winners:

• Alina Zmushka of Belarus took the women’s 50m breast in 31.44, followed by British-turned-Russian swimmer Tatiana Belonogoff who touched in 31.47. We’ll be publishing a separate post on Belonogoff’s federation change.
• The men’s 400 IM saw Jeremy Desplanches of Switzerland do his thing for gold, producing a winning effort of 4:14.76.
• Greece got on the board, courtesy of Apostolos Christou‘s winning effort of 54.08 in the 100m back. He led a trio of sub-55 men, which also included runner-up Yohann Ndoye Brouard of France (54.35) and his teammate Mewen Tomac (54.71).
• Greece wrangled up another gold by way of Konstantinos Englezakis‘ victory in the 400 free. The 18-year-old logged 3:49.27 to edge out Tunisian Ayoub Hafnaoui‘s time of 3:49.90.
• Israeli Yauhen Tsurkin won the men’s 50m fly in 23.74, out-touching Maxime Grousset by just .11.