FINA/ARENA Swimming World Cup - Berlin Recap

As expected, there were a number of fast times from the Berlin leg of the World Cup series. In a notoriously fast pool, the large number of international swimming stars did not disappoint.

Speed EnduranceTop Performers

Femke Heemskerk - 100m Free - 51.96, 200m Free - 1:52.42, 100m Back - 57.72

The star of the meet. Heemskerk destroyed a quality field in both the 100 and 200m Freestyle. She became the 3rd fastest woman ever over 200m Free and moved up to 8th all-time in the 100m Free. Heemskerk also smoked a 57.72 to win the 100m Back in the 6th fastest time of the year (notably ahead of Natalie Coughlin's best effort of 2010 so far).

Now, if only Heemskerk had some other lightning quick Dutch female sprinters to swim a relay with...

Dana Vollmer - 100m Fly - 55.72, 100m Free - 52.50, 200m Free - 1:53.67, 50m Fly 25.74

If Heemskerk takes the prize for swimmer of the meet, Vollmer just about takes performance of the meet for her 100m Fly effort of 55.72. Just 0.54 away from Diane Bui Duyet's World Record, Vollmer became the 3rd fastest ever in the event. She let Therese Alshammar take the race out (25.9 to her 27.3) but came back in an incredible 28.29. Bear in mind that most swimmers get faster as the World Cup series progresses, there might be more still to come from Vollmer.

Thiago Pereira - 200m IM - 1:52.81, 400m IM - 4:02.83, 100m IM - 52.59

No surprise that Thiago Pereira swam fast, he's been lights out throughout the entire SC season so far. Once again his best performance came in the 200m IM where he was under World Record pace by 0.37 at the 150m mark. Unfortunately he couldn't match the suited speed of Darian Townsend, an excellent Freestyler, on the final 50m, however he did come back faster than in Rio where he swam 1:52.72. (In Rio he was even faster at 150m - 0.83 seconds under WR pace).

As mentioned before... Pereira is getting close to Townsend's WR and could break it... Ryan Lochte could smash it.



A full set of results can be found here.

(Moscow World Cup starts tomorrow. Results will be here)

FINA/ARENA Swimming World Cup - Singapore

Top swims from the Singapore leg of the FINA/ARENA Swimming World Cup:-

Thiago Pereira - 200m IM - 1:53.45 - 951 Points - Game over for the overall men's point title. Pereira has now notched up the maximum available 75 points from the first three legs of the World Cup series. He leads Darian Townsend by 36 points with just four legs remaining. With Pereira scheduled to compete in each of the remaining stops on the tour, the only viable way for him to be overhauled is if world records start dropping, and Pereira has been the only man this year to threaten a world mark. Pereira's time of 1:53.45 improved upon the time set a few days previously in Beijing, but was 0.73 down on his world leading time from Rio.

One of the races to look forward to at the World Shortcourse Champs will be Pereira v Ryan Lochte. It might also be the race that sees 2010's first World Record go down. Darian Townsend's 1:51.55 might be within the reach of Pereira. It's definitely within reach for Lochte.

Therese Alshammar - 100m Butterfly - 56.32 - 934 Points - Game over for the overall women's point title. Ok... Alshammar doesn't have the title sown up to the same degree as Pereira has, however by taking 25 points in Singapore (total of 55 for the series) she has gone a long way towards making it a formality reality. Her closest rival is Julia Smit, who is back on 30 points. At this stage Alshammar just needs to score consistently in the last four rounds to wrap up the points title. Ominously for her rivals, the Swedish sprint queen is also getting faster round by round (57.04 in Rio, 56.80 in Beijing, 56.32 in Singapore).

Julia Smit - 200m IM - 2:08.14 - 919 Points - I wrote back in August, that until Julia Smit proves otherwise, I'm marking her down as a short course specialist. After a swift 2:08 in Singapore I haven't changed my opinion. She is now ranked third in the world, just half a second behind Australians Emily Seebohm and Kotuku Ngawati. This year Smit also broke the NCAA & American record in the 200yd IM but has only been able to manage a 2:12.5 in LC metres (22nd in the world this year, 8th fastest American). With the domestic competition so fierce in the 200m IM, Smit is going to need to improve in a LC pool if she is going to make future national teams.

Natalie Coughlin - 100m Backstroke - 57.78 - 873 Points - Coughlin was victorious on her return to short course swimming, a discipline she dominated for most of the last decade. Her time of 57.78 is off her very best from 2008 (56.51), but represents a successful return. Emily Seebohm leads the world on an impressive 56.58. Gao Chang (57.45) and Belinda Hocking (57.67) have also been faster than Coughlin's time this year. The 100m Backstroke should be a fantastic race in Dubai and Coughlin will need to get back down to her best time or better to stand a chance. With the quality of her starts and turns, I would find it hard to bet against her.

If you've read down this far, you're probably a pretty big fan of swimming. If that is the case, check out Fantasy Swimming. You pick the Top 3 swimmers per event and get points for each correct selection. They have the remaining legs of the World Cup available to make your picks, as well as Short Course Worlds.

FINA/ARENA Swimming World Cup - Beijing

The two days of swimming at the FINA/ARENA World Cup in Beijing have produced some outstanding times.


Some of the highlights below:-

Thiago Pereira - 200m IM - 1:54.21 - 932 Points. Pereira took another maximum 25 points from Beijing to match his 25 from Rio. With a full 50 points from the first two legs and due to compete at all the remaining legs of the World Cup, the competition for this year's World Cup prize for top male point scorer might just be over. One possible cause for concern is the difference in time (1.49 seconds) from his win in Rio (1:52.72) and Beijing (1:54.21).

Darian Townsend - 200m IM - 1:54.26 - 931 Points. Pereira only just held on to win the 200m IM from Townsend. At 150m Pereira was 1.44 seconds up on Townsend but only finished 0.05 seconds ahead of the South African. The two are due to go head to head again in Singapore this weekend and if Townsend can get even closer at the 150m we might see these positions reversed.

Gao Chang - 26.00 - 50m Back - 966 Points. The top scoring swim of the meet came from Gao in the 50m Back. It becomes the 5th fastest all time performance over 50m Back and is just 0.3 seconds shy of Sanja Jovanovic' World Record of 25.70. The Chinese Backstroker is putting together a strong 2010, she's now ranked No.1 in the world for LC and SC 50m Back and is 6th in the world in the LC 100m Back rankings with the Asian Games still to come this year.

Liu Jing - 400m Free - 4:00.55 - 931 Points. Liu Jing took the maximum available 25 points with victory in the women's 400m Free. She becomes the 16th fastest all-time performer in the event. Still a long way behind Laure Manaudou's textile best time of 3:56.09 though. (Manaudou's time from 2007 is one of the most impressive short course swims ever, despite being set before the suit era, it remains the third fastest swim ever).

Therese Alshammar - 56.80 - 100m Fly - 910 Points. Alshammar suddenly looks a little vulnerable in the race for the women's top points scorer. Despite winning the 100m Fly in an excellent time of 56.80, Alshammar was only able to pick up 5 points. Fortunately for the Swedish sprint star, not one of the Chinese women who finished ahead of Alshammar in the points in Beijing will be competing at the next stop in Singapore. Hinkelein Schreuder is the only other woman to have scored points from the first two World Cup legs and she sits 17 points back of Alshammar.

Ye Shiwen - 400m IM - 4:28.67 - 917 Points/53.66 - 100m Free - 859 Points. 14 year old Ye Shiwen continued to impress in 2010 with a particularly impressive 400m IM swim. Trailing World Record holder Julia Smit for most of the race, Ye put in a devastating freestyle split of 58.97. Smit led by 2.08 seconds at 300m but could only manage a freestyle leg of 1:01.30 to take second in 4:28.92.

Ye Shiwen's time is all the more impressive as it came on the same evening as her victory in the 100m Free in a time of 53.66. Clearly a special talent.

Ye Shiwen's swims will come under scrutiny. Some people will doubt her times and suspect that to acheive so much at such a young age, she must be doped... strange that Yolane Kukla, just turned 15, Yannick Agnel, Vlad Morozov, Bence Biczo etc don't receive the same scepticism. I suspect this will come to the fore when the Asian Games are upon us, where I predict China will set a number of world leading times... Remember - All athletes should be innocent until proven guilty.

Full Results - Here
Men's Overall Points Leaderboard - Here
Women's Overall Points Leaderboard - Here

FINA/ARENA Swimming World Cup - Singapore 16-17 October

 

The third leg of the FINA/ARENA Swimming World Cup takes place in Singapore (16-17 October) with arguably the best field so far this year.

All eyes will be on Natalie Coughlin (USA) who makes her return to short course metre competition. Coughlin has been in good form so far in 2010 and with her world class starts and turns, expect some fast swimming from the American ace. Also representing a strong USA squad will be Jessica Hardy, Randall Bal, Peter Marshall, Julia Smit, Elaine Breeden and Madison Kennedy.

A host of medal winners from the recent Commonwealth Games will also be on show. Australia's team includes medalists Leisel Jones, Marieke Guehrer, Hayden Stoeckel and James Richardson. South Africa are also sending a strong team led by Roland Schoeman, Cameron Van Der Burgh, Lyndon Ferns, Darian Townsend, Graemme Moore and Kathryn Meaklim. Canada's team includes Victoria Poon, Genevieve Saumur and Audrey Lacroix as well as seasoned IM swimmer Brian Johns.

Europe has a number of medal contenders competing with strong challenges likely to come from Therese Alshammer, Stefan Nystrand, Lars Frolander (SWE),Dominik Meichtry (CHE), Steffen Deibler, Dorothea Brandt, Jenny Mensing, Kerstin Vogel (GER), Hanna Maria Seppala (FIN), Hinkelein Schreuder (NED), Arkady Vyatchanin, Grigory Falko and Sergey Fesikov (RUS).

Results & Start Lists - Here
Official Site - Here
For anyone in Singapore - Tickets can be found here

FINA/ARENA Swimming World Cup - Beijing

Action gets underway today at the FINA/ARENA Swimming World Cup 2010 in Beijing. The competition sees the return of international competition to one of the most iconic swimming pools in the world, the watercube.

Fresh from competing at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi, South Africa have taken a strong team with their star swimmers Lyndon Ferns, Cameron Van Der Burgh, Roland Schoeman and Darian Townsend all competing. I'm sure they will be hoping for a more straight forward competition after the problems in India with Delhi Belly and the uproar caused by comments by Roland Schoeman, seemingly taken way out of context.

Other stars on display include Thiago Pereira, Guilherme Guido, Henrique Barbosa (BRA), Therese Alshammer, Lars Frolander (SWE), Steffen Deibler, Dorothea Brandt, Jenny Mensing (GER), Elaine Breeden, Peter Marshall, Julia Smit (USA), Arkady Vyatchanin, Grigory Falko, Sergey Fesikov (RUS), Gao Chang, Ye Shiwen (CHN), Hinkelein Schreuder (NED), Naoya Tomita (JAP)

Results & Start Lists - Here

UPDATE - First day finals recap - Here

Top point scorers from Day One
Women - Gao Chang - 50m Backstroke - 26.00 (966 points) Great time! Just missed Sanja Jovanovic' World Record of 25.70. More proof that the change of suits has affected Backstroke less than the other strokes.
Men - Naoya Tomita - 200m Breaststroke - 2:05.30 (893 points) Solid effort from Tomita, however I expect that points total to be beaten tomorrow. In Rio, Thiago Pereira led the men with 969 points for his 1:52.72 200m IM.

Short Course Swimming Fix

The first leg of the Fina/Arena Swimming World Cup, held in Rio de Janeiro, is in the books.

- Star of the meet goes to Thiago Pereira. Coming off a relatively strong longcourse summer season (world ranked 5th for the 400m IM, 6th for the 200m IM), Pereira was just 1.3 seconds away from Darian Townsend's 200m IM world record set last year. Pereira's time of 1:52.72 was the 11th fastest performance of all time. According to Twitter we're going to see the Brazilian at all of the remaining World Cup meets. He is definitely a contender for top overall points scorer (and the hefty prize money that goes along with that).

- On the women's side Therese Alshammar got off to an ideal start as she leads the points standings after Rio. Points are awarded to the top ranked swims of the meet and Alshammar's 57.04 earned her 899 points, enough for the maximum 25 points on offer.

For those interested in the professional nature and funding of the sport, here's an interesting quote from Alshammar...

“The World Cup Series is very important to me because the awards give me the necessary resources to support my practices in Australia. Another important aspect is that I believe that, to keep strong physically and mentally, it’s essential to compete a lot. This series of events keep me on alert and it’s part of my training. London Olympic Games 2012 are the main goal of my career”.

- Cesar Cielo had a strong, though not spectacular, showing on home soil. Cielo took narrow victories in both the 50m Free and 100m Free, beating Steffen Diebler both times. Cielo's 50m Free time was 21.08 from the heats (he swam 21.16 in the final) and 47.16 in the 100m Free. As has been the case all year, the 50m Free was a stronger event for him than the 100m. The 50m Free was just 0.15 seconds away from Steffen Nystrand's textile suit best time, whereas the 100m Free was 1.33 seconds off the best mark in textile, again held by short course behemoth Nystrand.


- Switching to Long Course briefly, 2010 is proving to be a strong year for Japanese swimming and one of their biggest female stars, Aya Terakawa, turned in a great time of 59.13 in the 100m Back at the 'National Physical Education Long-Course Championships' in Chiba (I've never heard of it either).

Terakawa's swim supplants Emily Seebohm at the top of the world rankings and is a new textile best time. Seebohm will get a chance to regain the top spot at Commonwealths where she will face England's Gemma Spoffort and Lizzie Simmonds.

Interesting note - Terakawa and Seebohm each hold 4 of the top 10 swims so far this year on the 100m Back. Terakawa has been sub-1:00 six times this year, Seebohm five times. Great consistency.


- Looking forward to future short course meets this year we have some interesting returning stars on the women's side.

Britta Steffen hopes to return to competition at the Berlin leg of the World Cup Series (30 and 31 October). For those who struggle with the German language Steffen, has now returned to full-time training and hopes to be back to 100% in the next two or three weeks. She also mentions that if the Olympics go well in 2012 that she will probably just swim the 50m Free and relays at the 2013 Worlds before hanging up the goggles.

Not to be outdone, a trio of returning Dutch women are set to compete at the European Short Course Championship in Eindhoven (25-28 November). Marleen Veldhuis, Inge Dekker and Ranomi Kromowidjojo, who all missed the European LC Champs last month, will battle it out on home soil.

Biedermann..... blogs!

So anyone that follows this blog knows that I can rarely go 3 blogs in a row without a Paul Biedermann mention. Everytime he swims he gets a mention. Everytime someone else swims he gets a mention. He's essentially taken up more space here than anyone else.

Now Europeans are done and dusted I thought I would be treading water for a few weeks with Biedermann news. I could have mentioned that he will be swimming the Stockholm leg of the World Cup Series as well as the Berlin leg alongside Britta Steffen, but it didn't seem 'blog worthy' enough.

True to his race tactics he was just cruising along, lulling me into a false sense of security, before dropping the hammer on Speed Endurance.... that's right, Biedermann blogs.

I may as well retire from blogging because there is no way I can match Biedermann. He's already come out firing with posts including literary quotes, fake facebook accounts and RETIRING FROM WORLD OF WARCRAFT. PB is taking swim blogging into a new era. The rest of the world needs to catch up.

Little known fact -  I once raced Biedermann in a 400m Free in 2004 (page 15 of the results - I hung with him for 200m before being blown away in the last half of the race). He beat me then .. and he'll beat me now.

FINA/ARENA Swimming World Cup - Rio de Janeiro *Including Start Lists*

September 10th - 12th, Parque Aquático Maria Lenk, Rio de Janeiro

In all the excitement of August's major competitions, the World Cup series seems to have been overlooked by many in the swimming world. Big mistake. The swimming world cup series always offers some quality racing. It also offers a chance for someone to break a World Record in 2010. Going to be pretty hard though.

Not sure I can mention his name on the blog any longer, but just for fun how about a Cesar Cielo, 50m & 100m Free time prediction... to get the ball rolling I'm saying 20.8 and 46.2.

The first stop on the global tour starts tomorrow in Rio de Janeiro.

Rio de Janeiro (BRA) 10 – 12 September 2010
Beijing (CHN) 12 – 13 October 2010
Singapore (SIN) 16 – 17 October 2010
Tokyo (JPN) 20 – 21 October 2010
Berlin (GER) 30 – 31 October 2010
Moscow (RUS) 2 – 3 November 2010
Stockholm (SWE) 6 – 7 November 2010


*Speed_Endurance Blog Exclusive* - Start Lists - HERE (credit where credit is due)

Participating Countries: 
Argentina, Germany, Brazil, Singapore, Colombia, China, Ecuador, USA, Holland, Indonesia, Japan, Russia, Sweden

Selection of swimmers competing (dominated by Brazilians, but still a good selection of top class international swimmers): 
Cesar Cielo, Kaio Almeida, Thiago Pereira, Nicholas Santos, Felipe Silva, Henrique Rodrigues, Tales Cerdeira, Tatiana Lemos Barbosa, Guilherme Guido, Fabiola Molina, Joanna Maranhao (BRA)
Steffen Deibler, Jenny Mensing, Kerstin Vogel, Marco Koch (GER)
Sakiko Nakamura, Kazuki Otsuka (JAP)
Peter Marshall, Randall Bal (USA)
Therese Alshammer, Joline Hoestman (SWE)
Hinkelein Schreuder (NED)
Arkady Vyatchanin, Nikolay Svortsov (RUS)
Omar Pinzon (COL)
Cecilia Biagioli (ARG)

Results will appear - HERE

The event will be shown on Brazilian TV Station - Canal SporTV (will look for a link to view the competition online).

Schedule of Events

Day 1 – Heats at 18:00h (06:00 pm) - Friday, 10TH September 2010
Finals at 10:00h (10:00 am) - Saturday, 11TH September 2010

800m Freestyle Women
100m Freestyle Men
200m Freestyle Women
50m Breaststroke Men
100m Breaststroke Women
400m IM Men
100m Butterfly Women
100m Backstroke Men
50m Backstroke Women
200m Butterfly Men
200m IM Women
400m Freestyle Men
50m Freestyle Women
200m Breaststroke Men
100m IM Men
200m Backstroke Women
50m Butterfly Men

Day 2 – Heats at 18:00h (06:00 pm) - Saturday, 11TH September 2010
Finals at 10:00h (10:00 am) - Sunday, 12TH September 2010

1500m Freestyle Men
100m Freestyle Women
200m Freestyle Men
50m Breaststroke Women
100m Breaststroke Men
400m IM Women
100m Butterfly Men
100m Backstroke Women
50m Backstroke Men
200m Butterfly Women
200m IM Men
400m Freestyle Women
50m Freestyle Men
200m Breaststroke Women
100m IM Women
200m Backstroke Men
50m Butterfly Women