Medals Elusive In The Pool

The New Zealand swimmers couldn’t quite get among the medals at the pool.

Matthew Stanley looked sharp in his 200m freestyle heat and his 1min 47.16s (nearly half a second faster than Danyon Loader swam to win the gold medal in Atlanta in 1996) placed him fifth for the final. Among those who failed to progress were Mitchell Donaldson, 1min 49.76s, and Dylan Dunlop-Barrett, 1min 50.23s.

In the 200m freestyle final, Stanley was unable to match his morning swim and was timed at 1min 48.11s for seventh place.

Corey Main, who had swum so impressively to qualify for the 100m backstroke final in fifth place, was sixth in the final in 54.40s. The time matched his heat effort, but was slower than his semi-final.

The 4 x 100m freestyle relay the New Zealand quartet of Ewan Jackson, Steve Kent, Corey Main and Dunlop-Barrett recorded 3min 20.94s, which placed them sixth going into the final. Though they went marginally faster in the final – 3min 19.88s – they slipped back to seventh.

In the women’s 100m freestyle S8 Nikita Howarth struggled and was fifth in 1min 21.50s. In the final, she was fifth again, this time in 1min 19.36s.

Breaststroke specialist Glenn Snyders, in his favoured 100m impressed in turning in the third-fastest heat time. Snyders, 27, was always in charge of his heat and recorded 1min 00.75s, which meant he was the third fastest of the 16 semi-finalists. The two ahead of him were Englishman Adam Peaty and Scot Ross Murdoch.

In the semi-finals, Snyders finished second in his heat and fourth overall with a time of 59.98s, which was only a blink outside his national record.