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 Italian women broke their National Record and won the bronze medal in the final of the 4×100 medley relay, the last event of the 2018 Short Course World Championships in Hangzhou.
Their time of 3:51.38 broke their 3:53.58 from the 2016 Worlds in Windsor, and they also narrowly missed breaking the record in the prelims (3:53.89).
They gradually made their way through the field, sitting 7th after Margherita Panziera‘s backstroke leg (58.32), and then Martina Carraro‘s 1:04.47 breast split got them up into 4th. Elena Di Liddo (56.41) held them there on fly, and then Federica Pellegrini anchored them in 52.11 to bring them past Japan for the bronze medal.
Both Carraro and Pellegrini were on the 2016 record breaking team as well. Check out the splits of the two teams:
| Italy, 2016 SC Worlds | Italy, 2018 SC Worlds |
| Scalia – 58.82 | Panziera – 58.39 |
| Carraro – 1:05.43 | Carraro – 1:04.47 |
| Di Pietro – 56.38 | Di Liddo – 56.41 |
| Pellegrini – 52.95 | Pellegrini – 52.11 |
| 3:53.58 | 3:51.38 |
The Italian men also set a new National Record in this event, though it was done in the preliminaries as the missed the final in 9th. They clocked a time of 3:26.11, and their old record of 3:27.05 was actually also a 9th place finish at the 2014 World Championships.
| Italy, 2014 SC Worlds | Italy, 2018 SC Worlds |
| Bonacchi – 51.56 | Sabbioni – 51.61 |
| Toniato – 58.40 | Martinenghi – 57.23 |
| Rivolta – 50.67 | Rivolta – 49.89 |
| Dotto – 46.42 | Miressi – 47.38 |
| 3:27.05 | 3:26.11 |
Had they made the final they could’ve been significantly faster. Simone Sabbioni was 1.4 seconds slower on the lead-off than he went in the individual 100 back (50.21), Fabio Scozzoli was 56.48 in the 100 breast final which is three quarters of a second faster than Nicolo Martinenghi went on the split in the prelims, and both Lorenzo Zazzeri and Alessandro Miressi have had 46.0 freestyle splits here. Miressi was only 47.38 in the prelims.