The American swimmer won, as expected, 400 freestyle women, while the equivalent of men was starring the Chinese Sun Young. A lukewarm Sunday for the Israeli team at the championship
8 days of swimming pool greens were set off on Sunday for the World Swimming Championships in Budapest. On the first evening, the world's best swimmer, Katie Ledecky, won her first gold medal in the 400 freestyle. As expected, Ledecky did not get a shot from her rivals and ran to victory, though not at a world record time. The American finished at 3:58.64, which was far from her peak, but was enough for the gold.
Lia Smith finished second with 4:01.54 min and Chinese Bienja finished third with 4:03.25 min.
The men's ointment opened the evening show, and was a solo show by the Chinese Sun Yang, who won the world's 400th Freestyle for the third time in a row. The Chinese had started burners from the beginning of the ointment, in half the distance he swam at a world record. After 300 meters he lost it, but none of his opponents could get close to him. Sun Young first touched the wall in 3:41.83 minutes and revenge against the Australian Mac Horton who beat him in Rio 2016 and this time settled for second place in 3:43.85 min. Italian Gabriella Datti finished third in 3:43.93 min.
Several members of the Israeli national team to the championship also opened this morning. The first to jump into the water was Keren Siebner, who swam in the 100th preliminaries and hoped to reach the Israeli peak of Amit Ivri (58.21). In practice, Siebner was away from the game and finished 24th overall at 59.72. By the way, Sweden's Sarah Sjostrom signaled her intentions with a crazy 55.96-year-old result already in qualifying (slow by 48 million from its peak).
Marc Hinnawi then jumped to the men's 400 freestyle advance, knowing that at this distance only the 8 fastest are moving on, but also out of a desire to improve his record to the Israeli record of Ido Haber (3:51.54 min). In the first half of the ointment, he was still close to the lead, but in the second half he weakened and lost rhythm. In the end, he finished at 3:57.43, which ranked him only 39th. Marcus Schlesinger leapt ahead of the 50th butterfly for men, where a 4-point improvement Meiron Cheruti's Israeli record (23.70s) was worth a place in the semifinals. Schlesinger finished in the penultimate place at his 24.00th time and finished 27th overall. At the end of the morning presentation, the first two swimmers' ointments were held 4 times, 100 times free for men and women, in which Israeli quartets participated. Among the men, the quartet finished 17th out of 20 at 3:21.23 minutes, which was almost three seconds slower than the Israeli record. The members of the quartet were Liran Konovalov, Yaakov Tomarkin, Denis Locatav and Tomer Frankel.
The team quartet finished 11th out of 14 at 3:44.35 minutes, which was two and a half seconds slower than the Israeli high. Andrea Moraz, Zohar Shikler, Keren Siebner and Amit Ivri participated in this quartet. Follow us Facebook Twitter Instagram
