Christian Sprenger led the Australians to three medals on night two of the world championships. He swam his way to a Gold medal with a 58.79 in the men’s 100 breaststroke. This is great news for Australia, who is trying to rebuild their National program after one of their top corporate sponsors dropped their funding. Swimming Australia lost about two million per year in funding. They were only one year into a five year sponsorship.
Alicia Coutts was the other Australian medalist this evening. She finished with two silver medals in her 100 butterfly and 200 IM. Her time in the 100 butterfly was 56.97 and her time in the 200 IM was 2:09.39.
The Australians had the most medals of day 2 and improve to second in the overall medal count with 4 medals (1 Gold, 3 Silver), behind the United States of America with 6 medals (2 Gold, 2 Silver, 2 Bronze).
Samantha Marshall finished 15th in the semi-final of the women’s 100 breaststroke but will not advance to finals.
Australian Ashley Delaney finished seventh in the semi-finals of the mens 100 backstroke with a time of 53.74 to qualify for finals. Gareth Kean of New Zealand also finished eighth in the 100 backstroke and qualified for finals.
Lauren Boyle of New Zealand was able to finish in the top 8 of the prelims of the women’s 1500 and also qualified for finals.
Belinda Hawking and Emily Seebohm, teammates from Australia, both finished in the top 8 during the semi-finals of the women’s 100 backstroke and will advance to finals.
Just after that, Australian Thomas Fraser-Holmes finished seventh in the prelims of the men’s 200 freestyle and his teammate, Cameron McEvoy tied with Sebastiaan Vershuren of the Netherlands. Surprisingly, Verschuren decided to pull out of the swim off, giving McEvoy the 8th spot in the final. Matthew Stanley of New Zealand made it into the semi-finals but finished 16th and will not be swimming in finals.