The HardCoreSwim of the week for this week goes to Sophie Pascoe, a swimmer from New Zealand who won 5 gold medals at the 2013 IPC World Championships in Montreal, Canada last week.
Wait, what? Is that a repeat?
Yes. We just gave a second consecutive HardCore Swim of the Week to Sophie Pascoe. It’s never happened before, it probably won’t happen again, but Pascoe did something really incredible in Montreal.
In a single World Championships, she won the golds in the 100 fly, the 100 back, the 100 breast, and the 100 free in the S10
Classification. We alluded to the possibility of it last week, when she won the award for breaking the World Record in the 100 free, but I’m not even sure we believed it could really happen.
Pascoe did it, though.
She accomplished something that not Missy Franklin, nor Katie Ledecky, nor Katinka Hosszu, nor Michael Phelps could accomplish. At the 2010 World Championships, Mallory Weggemann won an unbelievable 8 World titles, and 9 medals overall, but even she couldn’t pull this off – she took silver in the 100 back, and didn’t swim the 100 fly (though she won gold in the 50).
Just for good measure, Pascoe added a 5th gold medal in the 50 free, and broke World Records in the 50 free, 100 free, and 100 fly. Could she have gone for more medals? Undoubtedly – she’s the World Record holder, from swims this year, in the 200 free, 200 IM, and 50 fly as well. That shouldn’t diminish this accomplishment though, it’s not clear there’s many people who can accomplish that regardless of their event schedules.
Appreciate this while it happens, folks. We’ll probably never do this sort of double ever again.
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Great accomplishments for Her !!! Bravo