Swimswam / Braden Keith coverage of the women’s 200 butterfly at the 2013 FINA World Championships:
Liu Zige the 2008 Olympic champion and 2009 World Champion, took the women’s 200 butterfly in a time of 2:04.59 in a thrilling race with crowd favourite and 400 freestyle silver medalist Mireia Belmonte Garcia. Liu who has not had many great showings since 2009, finishing third at the 2011 World Championships and eighth at the Olympics, had a season’s best of 2:07.10 that she posted at Chinese Nationals.
With the crowd behind her Belmonte Garcia did everything she could in the final 100 meters to catch Liu. She trailed Liu by 57 one-hundredths of a second at the halfway point, but by the 150 meter mark Belmonte Garcia made up the ground and heading into the final 50 meters the two athletes were tied. The Spaniard did not have enough in the length of the pool to pull ahead of Liu and finished second in a time of 2:04.78, breaking her own Spanish record of 2:05.25.
Liu and Belmonte Garcia’s splits are below:
Liu – 28.87/1:00.06 (31.19)/1:32.49 (32.43)/2:04.59 (32.10)
Belmonte – 28.29/1:00.63 (32.34/1:32.49 (31.86)/2:04.78 (32.29)
Hungarian Katinka Hosszu collected her second medal of the competition after winning the 200 IM earlier in the competition.
The next five finishers included; Natsumi Hoshi of Japan (2:06.09), Hungarian Zsuzsanna Jakabos (2:06.58), 2012 Olympic champion Jiao Liuyang of China (2:06.65), American Cammile Adams (2:07.73) and Judit Ignacio Sorribes (2:08.40).
Adams was the second seed coming out of the semi-finals, but added a second-and-a-half in this final to fall down the rankings.