Karin Prinsloo is going to take home a haul of gold medals from the South African Championships, after winning her 4th (50 free-26.08) and 5th (50 back-29.18) National Championships, but it appears as though she’s going to have to wait for a meeting of the Swimming South America board to find out if she will have a spot on the team’s flight to Shanghai this summer. She posted her first automatic qualifying time in the 50-back semi-finals yesterday, but in finals missed the mark by a tenth.
Though no women earned automatic qualifications on day 5 from Port Elizabeth, the men were on fire. Cameron van der Burgh blew away the field with a FINA Automatic Qualifying time of 27.24 in the 50 breaststroke. This is the fastest swim time in the world this year, by a hefty margin. He will be joined at the World Championships by Charl Crous, who like van der Burgh backed up an A-cut in yesterday’s semi-finals with a win, and another A-cut, in today’s final. He took the 100 back in 55.03. He’s not going to win any medals with that mark, but he’s only 20, and has a great future.
Despite the 100 fly coming at the beginning of the session and the 200 IM coming at the end, Darian Townsend scratched the former (where he was the top seed) for the latter, and that is a decision that paid off for him in a big way. He posted a 1:59.06 that is a strong automatic qualifying time, and ranks him 4th in the world this year, just ahead of Ryan Lochte: a gold medal favorite for Shanghai. Sebastian Rousseau had another heartbreaking finish. He touched in 2:01.42 to miss the FINA A cut by .02 seconds. This is at least the second time he’s come extremely close to qualifying but fallen short.
In that 100 fly, which was vacated of it’s top two seeds Townsend and Rousseau, the young Chad le Clos, who already earned his berth in the 200 fly, stormed back from a bad semi-final swim to take the win in 53.51. Townsend probably secured the relay spot with his 53.00 from semis, but le Clos may have done enough to get himself a prelims swim for a team that has a decent chance at winning a medal.
Wendy Trott already scored World Championship bids in the 800 and 1500 freestyles, but came up just a little shirt of an auto-bid in the 400 free. She did win handily in 4:11.97, though, and Swimming South Africa will likely leave it up to her and her coaches as to whether she chooses to compete in that event at the World Championships.
Suzaan van Biljon’s comeback saga continued with a win in the women’s 100 breaststroke in a time of 1:10.37. While it won’t earn her a spot in Shanghai (unless the South Africans choose to send a medley relay, which they did not in 2009), it’s an important step in her comeback. For her to put up a time like that only 3-months back in the water (after 2 years out of it) is an encouraging sign for her as she battles towards London.
Natasha de Vos made her first National Championship Final in the 200 back in 2007 at age 14. Now, at age 18, she’s a relative veteran of the event, and took her first title in the event. Her time of 2:15.88 was nowhere near a FINA qualifying time, but she has a very high ceiling for the future.
For the second-straight night, the Northern Tigers Swimming Club broke a National Record in a free relay. Only this time, their swim of 3:47.70 took down the African Continental record as well. The quartet featured Prinsloo, Leone Vorester, Jean-Marie Neethling, and Kayla Ferreira. Showing the depth of the club, only two of the swimmers (Neethling and Prinsloo) were on both record-setting relays.
The Northern Tigers swimmers were not the only ones breaking big records in South Africa on this day. Swimming in the morning prelims of the 1500, Charl Bouwer broke his own S13 disability classification World Record by .06 seconds in 16:36.31. That will place him in the senior final of the standard 1500m final during Saturday’s last session of the meet. South African Paralympic teammate Natalie Du Toit made history in 2008 when she became the first amputee to qualify for the Olympic Games, having done so as an open water swimmer. Bouwer is already a superstar on the Paralympic circuit, and is now making waves on the standard circuit. His S13 classification means that he is not blind, but has less than 20 degrees of vision (in other words, is nearly blind).