World Championships: United States Posts Top Two Qualifiers in Women’s 100 Fly; Komisarz Goes Sub 58

MELBOURNE, Australia, March 24. TEAM USA started off the initial preliminary session of competition right at the FINA World Championships in Melbourne, Australia as Rachel Komisarz and Natalie Coughlin picked up the top two qualifying times in the women's 100 fly.

Komisarz broke the 58-second barrier with a 57.98 for the top time, while Coughlin clocked a 58.34 for second. Komisarz split 27.51 at the 50-meter mark while Coughlin was at 26.97 for the midpoint. Coughlin should have plenty left in the tank for the final lap when it comes time for the semifinal and final.

Joining them in the top eight are Australia's Jessicah Schipper (58.34), the Netherlands Inge Dekker (58.66), Russia's Irina Bespalova (58.71) and Natalia Sutyagina (58.72), Australia's Libby Lenton (58.93) and France's Alena Popchanka (59.14).

Schipper and Lenton went gold-silver in this event at the 2005 World Champs and simply did enough to move through to the next round. Lenton, in particular, must be smart in terms of her plan of attack, due to an arduous schedule.

Heading into the week, there was great speculation over what the Chinese women would do. After the first event, the jury is still out. China's entries, Xu Yanwei (59.23) and Zhou Yafei (59.36) qualified ninth and 10th for the semifinals. Notably, Slovakia's Martina Moravcova failed to reach the semis as she managed only a 1:00.02 for 18th place.

Click Here to view event results PDF file.

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