Australia Gold Wins Tight Contest with Australia Green, New Zealand in Trans Tasman Series

CANBERRA, Australia, July 7. ON the final day of a three-stop tour during the Trans Tasman Series held this week in Australia, the Australia Gold team picked up a narrow triumph over Australia Green and New Zealand in the short course meter competition.

Gold finished with 607.5 points, while Green took second with 604.5 points. New Zealand rounded out the contest with 601 points.

"I put that victory down to the guys basically calling on all their reserves and, after being 17 points down after the first meet in Woy Woy, slowly progressively fighting their way through and in the end it all paid off," Gold head coach Carl Wilson said. "We had some wonderful individual performances but it was an overall team effort and a lot of those points we dragged back came from people finishing third instead of fourth or fourth instead of fifth and helping to build points."

A pair of meet records fell in relay action. In the men's 400 freestyle, Green's Jason Schnyder, Nick Johnston, Tommaso D'orsogna and Daniel Smith touched in 3:24.20, while teammates Charlotte Clarke, Leiston Pickett, Ellese Zalewski and Tegan Warrener broke the meet record in the women's 400 medley relay in 4:12.52.

Gold's Ellen Fullerton claimed a pair of titles to help her team to the crown. She touched in 4:47.09 in the 400 IM and won the 100 free in 57.48.

Other winners for Gold included Grace Loh in the 200 back (2:13.60), Jessica Legge in the 200 breast (2:31.39) and Ryan Napoleon in the 200 fly (2:01.54).

Green scored several victories as well. Smith won the 200 free in 1:50.03, while Zalewski grabbed the win in the 100 fly (1:02.72).

Third-place New Zealand demonstrated some top-end talent with five titles on the final day of swimming. Daniel Bell topped the 100 back (55.79) and the 200 IM (2:04.45) for the daily double. Meanwhile, Shane Patience took home the 800 free (8:07.99), Cara Baker touched first in the 400 free (4:14.00) and Starn Simpson snared the 100 breast (1:03.87) to account for the rest of New Zealand's titles.

Special thanks to Swimming Australia for contributing to this report.

Click Here to view event results PDF file.

Name*

Email*

Welcome to our community. We invite you to join our discussion. Our community guidelines are simple: be respectful and constructive, keep on topic, and support your fellow commenters. Commenting signifies that you agree to our Terms of Use