Top swimmers off to Manchester
06/04/2008 22:27  - (SA)  

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Swimming day 6 results SA's Olympic qualifiers Four swimmers rescued off CT

Durban - Relay time trials for the SA Olympic squad dominated the final session of the highly successful 2008 Telkom National Aquatic championships in the Kings Park pool in Durban on Sunday night.

Now it is off to Manchester for the Fina World Short course championships beginning on Wednesday.

And off to a blistering start in the men's 800 metres relay were Jean Basson, Sebastian Rousseau, Jasper Venter and Darien Townsend. Not only did hey produce an All Africa record of 7:15,21 sec but Basson's first leg also reduced Ryk Neethling's All Africa record for 200m to 1:45,85 secs.

The women's 4x100ms medley relay team of Melissa Corfe, Suzaan van Biljon, evergreen Mandy Loots and Lize-Marie Retief produced a South African and Africa record of 4:03,62. It comes up for Olympic consideration.

Melissa swam the backstroke in an Olympic qualifying time of 1:01,14, followed by 1:08,28 for the breaststroke by Suzaan, the butterfly by Mandy in 58,82s and the freestyle by Lize-Mari Retief in 55,38.

With the fans screaming their encouragement - almost bringing down the Kings Park Pool rafters in the process - Riaan Schoeman set his Olympic qualifying time in the men's 400m individual medley in a time of 4:18,02.

Not to be outdone

It was a great swim with his breakdown times of 59,88 for the butterfly, 1:04,83 for the backstroke, 1:13,48 for the breaststroke and finally 1:00,62 for the freestyle.

Individually the girls were not to be outdone either. Jessica Pengelly (Western Province) and Kathryn Meaklim (KZN) also swam to Olympic qualifying time as only four tenths of a second separated winner Jessica from Kathryn in the race to the touch the pad. Jessica won in 4:41,35.

Gerhard Zandberg also added his name to the growing Olympic qualifiers list in the men's 100m backstroke in 55,13.

Suzaan Biljon of Northern Tigers picked up her third gold in the breaststroke when she won the 50m SA title in 32,60. She also won the 100m and 200 freestyle crowns.

Other gold medal winners on Sunday night were Leone Vorster (Limpopo Province) in the women's 100m freestyle, Warren Grobbelaar (Tigers) in the men's 50m butterfly, Elzanne Werth (Central Gauteng), Cameron van den Burgh (Tigers) in the men's 50m breaststroke and Troyden Prinsloo of KwaZulu-Natal in the men's 1 500m freestyle.

- SAPA

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