World Championships: Favorite Status Goes to Liam Tancock After 50 Backstroke Semifinals

By John Lohn

MELBOURNE, Australia, March 31. THE Commonwealth Games champion in the 50 backstroke, Great Britain's Liam Tancock continued his superb efforts in the dorsal events this week by leading the qualifiers to the final of the one-lap sprint. Tancock, the bronze medalist in the 100 backstroke to Americans Aaron Peirsol and Ryan Lochte, checked in with a time of 25.08.

"I am pretty pleased with that, I swam faster than this morning", Tancock said. "I have a great feeling about the final and I just really look forward to it now."

Peirsol and Lochte each advanced to the semifinal round, but opted to scratch the event after the morning preliminaries. Germany will have quality representation in the final in Steffen Driesen (25.21), second-fastest, and Thomas Rupprath. The world-record holder, Rupprath was fourth in 25.29, just behind South Africa's Gerhard Zandberg (25.26).

Great Britain also advanced Matthew Clay to the final. Clay was timed in 25.48 and was followed by Japan's Junya Koga (25.55), Greece's Aristeidis Grigoriadis (25.66) and Australian Matt Welsh (25.66). Grigoriadis is the defending champion from Montreal and Welsh has won the silver medal at the past two World Championships.

Click Here to view event results PDF file.

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