Naidich Breaks South American Record; Pereira Wins 100 Fly on Day 2 of Maria Lenk Trophy

Thanks to D’Artagnan Dias, for contributing to this report.

Day two of the 2013 Maria Lenk Trophy saw a similarly slow session as the first night did, with no new World Championship qualifying times for the Brazilians.

The most noteworthy swim of the day was the men’s 100 fly, where Thiago Pereira, having declared a shifted focus toward shorter events going toward Rio, winning the 100 fly in 53.11, followed closely by American-trained Arthur Mendes (53.14) and Kaio Almeida placing 3rd in 53.17.

None of those times were fast enough to qualify for the World Championships, nor was Pereira’s 52.96 from prelims. He said after his swim that he wasn’t disappointed with his time because he is coming off of a hip injury that has affected his training. Now healthy again, though, he expects to be fully committed to training for Worlds.

In the women’s edition of that same race, it was Dutch swimmer Inge Dekker who won in 59.12, followed by Daynara de Paula in 59.61 – the top finishing Brazilian swimmer. 15-year old Giovanna Diamante swam a 1:01.78, which will qualify her for the World Junior Championships in Dubai; her best coming into this year was just a 1:04.03, showing some badly-needed and rapid improvement in the Brazilian women’s squad.

In total, through two days of competition, the Brazilians have 14 swimmers qualified for Junior Worlds: a much better result than their senior squad has seen.

In the men’s 200 breaststroke, a race where the Brazilians used to be thick with talent, the winner was Gabriel Souza in just 2:13.42. The names were all there, but the field was simply slow. Henrique Barbosa took 2nd in 2:13.48, Tales Cerdeira was 3rd in 2:13.54, and Felipe Lima placed 4th in 2:14.47. Cerdeira had the best time of the day, swimming 2:12.87 in prelims to miss the qualifying standard by less than a tenth of a second.

In the women’s race, UniSanta’s Julia Sebastian won in 2:31.79 (she’s an Argentine). It would’ve taken nearly a National Record to qualify for Worlds.

And finally, in the men’s 1500, Argentinian Martin Naidich was the fastest finisher in 15:10.24: the only swimmer under the World Championship standard. That breaks the South American record set by Brazilian Luiz Arapiraca at this same meet in 2011 at 15:12.69. His countrymate Juan Pereyra was 2nd in 15:19.87, and Arapiraca was the top Brazilian finisher in just 15:22.95. With Naidich not being registered with a Brazilian club, that technically made Pereyra the event champion in this race.

Full meet results available here.

Scores through 2 days: