The Dolphins have got the gold at last halfway through this week’s World Swimming Championships as what a moment by Sam Williamson – the 26 year old from Mount Waverley in Victoria – who wowed everybody in the Men’s 50m breaststroke sprint Final. He might have fired off the bat from behind but had a brilliant last 25m form to lock out Italian Nicole Martinenghi at the end of the wall by just 0.07 of a sec at 26.32 – how good!! This is his first World Championship gold medal as let’s hope he will kick on for more throughout this year including the Summer Olympics in Paris this July-August.
Other than that, we were also oh so close where Elijah Winnington was two seconds behind Daniel Wiffen from Ireland in the Men’s 800m Freestyle Final & also in the 4 x 100m Mixed Medley Relay Final to Team USA. Elijah was outstanding from the start with the early lead where he was on the World Record radar at one stage but just couldn’t stay ahead when he lost the lead towards the last 400m. He did get back a spot back that late towards the very end though – just not enough time to challenge Wiffen there a bit longer. Meanwhile in the Mixed Medley race, slow start but Williamson (Breaststroke) organised a great springboard for his female team-mates to bring it home from 3rd where Brianna Throssell (butterfly) & Shayna Jack (freestyle) did their best during the last half shift – even though it wasn’t possible to catch down Team USA for 2nd.
And shoutout to Throssell again with the 200m Freestyle in bronze. Now the race for gold may be out of reach by Siobhan Haughey from Hong Kong while Jack’s good start has quickly faded not far from the end down in 7th, but she too has a brilliant swim all along on what has been her first individual World Championship medal other than lots of team relays.
Another four days left to go despite the chances of topping the medal charts may be out of reach since most of our top swimmers are choosing the Olympics over this World Championships, but there will be at least 1-2 gold medal opportunities coming up tomorrow such as Iona Anderson in the 50m backstroke sprint and the Women’s 4 x 200m Freestyle Team Relay.
