The LX Campeonato De España Absoluto de Invierno quietly took place over the weekend at the Centro Can LLong. Although megastar and 2016 Olympic gold medalist Mireia Belmonte was absent from the meet, having just competed while sick at the Short Course World Championships in Windsor, both the men’s and women’s fields still brought their best.
Bruno Ortiz, formerly of the University of Michigan, got the job done across several events before the meet was through. He nailed wins in both the 50m and 100m breaststroke races, clinching the win in the former in 27.11 and the latter in 59.89. As Ortiz is one of the rarer swimmer specimens who excels at both breaststroke and freestyle, he notched two silvers in the sprint free events behind foreign athlete Konrad Cerniak, a Pole who trains in Spain. Cerniak took the men’s 50m and 100m freestyles in respective times of 21.55 and 46.80. Ortiz’s silver medal winning times wound up as 22.13 in the splash n’ dash and 48.03 in the 100m freestyle.
Marc Sanchez also made headlines over the weekend with a series of 5 individual victories at the meet. He nabbed gold in the men’s 400m freestyle in a time of 3:42.56, gold in the 400m IM in 4:07.50, 200m freestyle in 1:44.78 , 800m free in 7:50.04, as well as gold in the 1500m free. In the longest race, Sanchez scored a new meet record, with his time of 14:37.51 comfortably slipping past the previous meet mark of 14:45.92 on the board since just last year.
Highlighting the women’s performances was a National Club Record in the 4x200m freestyle relay event. The C.N. Saint Andreu foursome of Lidon Munoz, Ana Alonso, Marta Gonzalez and Africa Zamorano clinched the win in a new mark of 7:51.87, overtaking the previous record held by club rival C.N. Sabadell at 7:52.24.
Overall, the men’s club competition was won by C.N. Sabadell in 890.5 points, with the women’s meet calling C.N. Saint Andreu champions with a point total of 878.
Six, 200IM too.