The Cal freshman class has been the star of this meet, and after her teammate Rachel Bootsma was the second-best 100 back in history on Friday, Liz Pelton crushed the NCAA, American, and U.S. Open Records in the 200 backstrokes on Friday night.
Her final time of 1:47.84 broke the old NCAA/U.S. Open Record set by Florida’s Gemma Spofforth in 2009 at NCAA’s with a 1:48.34; Spofforth is British by birth, so Pelton held the old American Record from this year’s Pac-12 Championships with a 1:48.39.
The comparative splits show that Pelton went out much faster than Spofforth did in her record-breaking swim at the 2009 SEC Championships. Whereas Spofforth actually negative-split her race, by a lot, Pelton went out very hard in 53.05. Spofforth’s impressive back-half was probably, in small part at least, a function of the suit that she was wearing. The polyurethane suits allowed swimmers to stay down for a long time at the end of their races.
| Spofforth ’09 | 26.22 | 28.39 | 26.71 | 26.92 | 1:48.34 |
| Pelton ’13 | 25.93 | 27.12 | 27.41 | 27.38 | 1:48.39 |
Another suit record bites the dust.
what an amazing swim! congrats to Pelton! Hopefully Pelton can translate this success to long course this summer & give Franklin a run for her money.
Can’t wait to see it on TV!
Just saw it on replay on espn3..at approximately the 30 minute mark.
http://espn.go.com/watchespn/player/_/id/833225/size/condensed/
I can definitely deal with Pelton giving Franklin a run for her money!
I like Miss Pelton and I knew she would swim 1.47 but Missy is a class apart. I know she is much better in long course and it’s a good thing for her international results, but with all the starts, turns and underwaters work she’ll do at Cal, she will improve very quickly her SCY times. I predict Missy at least in 1.46 before the end of her college career.