Evgeny Rylov Claims 200 Backstroke Top Seed

(140820) -- Nanjing, Aug 20,2014 (Xinhua) -- Evgeny Rylov of Russian Federation celebrates after the final of Men's 50m Backstroke of Nanjing 2014 Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing, capital of east China?s Jiangsu Province, on August 20, 2014. Evgeny Rylov won the gold. (Xinhua/Yue Yuewei) (lyq)

Photo Courtesy: Xinhua/Yue Yuewei

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Russia’s Evgeny Rylov stopped the clock in 1:55.02 to take the top spot for semifinals of the men’s 200 backstroke tonight. Rylov was sixth in the 100 back Monday night, but he still posted an impressive time of 52.74. Almost a half second behind him was China’s Jiayu Xu, the 100 back silver medalist, who touched in 1:55.51.

Australian Mitch Larkin entered with the fastest time in the world this year, and he’ll head to semifinals in third with a 1:56.01.

The gold medalist in the 100 backstroke Ryan Murphy posted a 1:56.29. He goes in fourth to the to the semifinals as he tries to add more hardware to his resume.

“The 200 back always hurts, but I tried to make it as easy as possible,” Murphy said.

His college and American teammate Jacob Pebley was just behind with a 1:56.44, qualifying fifth, and Jan-Philip Glania of Germany and Russia’s Andrei Shabasov both touched in 1:56.50 this morning to tie for sixth. Japan’s Ryosuke Irie, the silver medalist in the event four years ago, is eighth in 1:56.61. Irie is the only returning medalist in the event from London.

Chiristian Diener of Germany (1:56.62), Joshua Beaver of Australia (1:56.65), and Guangyuan Li of China (1:56.85) take the ninth through 11th seeds.

Brazil’s Leondardo De Deus (1:57.00), Japan’s Masaki Kaneko (1:57.19), Spain’s Hugo Gonzalez de Oliviera (1:57.50), New Zealand’s Corey Main (1:57.51), and Israel’s Yakov Toumarkin (1:57.58) will also race again tonight.

Full preliminary results can be found here.

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