BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA. TUNING up for the Australian World Championship Trials meet beginning March 24 in Melbourne, Olympians Liesel Jones (breaststrokes) and Geoff Huegill (butterfly) recorded impressive early-season long course times during the State Age Group and Open Championships here.<\/p>\n
Jones, who made Australia's Olympic team last September and won a bronze medal in the 100 (pr 1:07.49), looked very race-ready with her 1:08.74-2:29.04 Open wins. She did even better in the 200 prelims (2:28.03). Her career best double-century is a 2:26.59 from last winter's (the northern hemisphere's summer's) early August meet in Brisbane, which ranked her 10th globally for the year.<\/p>\n
Huegill, Olympic silver medalist in the 100 fly who set a Games' record in the semis (51.96) that ranked No. 1 globally for 2000, won here in an easy 53.52. The Sydney fly winner was Sweden's Lars Frolander (European record 52.00), who is a former NCAA champ for Coach Eddie Sutton's SMU Mustangs, and holds the U.S. Open-collegiate record in the yards version of
\nthis event at 45.59.<\/p>\n
Huegill will be after teammate Michael Klim's world-record 51.81 set during a time trial in December of 1999 at the Australian Institute of.<\/p>\n
In fact, Huegill's 51.96 is the fastest 100 fly ever
\nunder truly competitive conditions and arguably the
\n"real" world record.<\/p>\n
Several other prominent Aussies acquited themselves well at the Open Championships, held at the Chandler Aquatic Centre. Backstroker-IMer Robert van der Zant, still going strong at 25, won both backstroke races
\n(56.85-2:03.90); both IMs (2:03.36-4:24.83) and the 200 free too (1:51+).<\/p>\n
Van der Zant ranked 10th globally last season in the 200 IM (pr 2:01.47 from the Australian Olympic Trials in May), but in the 400 IM was not among the Top 50 in the world. His pr here is 4:23.70 from the '98 season that ranked him 27th globally.<\/p>\n
Olympic 1500 gold medalist Grant Hackett looked in fine form while winning the 400 free (3:49.91) and sprinter Ashley Callus — a member of the winning and world record-setting 400 free relay at Sydney — showed he's lost none of his speed while "crusing" to 22.75-49.53 50-100 free victories.<\/p>\n
Callus ranked 23rd last year in the 50 free (22.54) and 19th in the century (49.46) with both times prs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA. TUNING up for the Australian World Championship Trials meet beginning March 24 in Melbourne, Olympians Liesel Jones (breaststrokes) and Geoff Huegill (butterfly) recorded impressive early-season long course times<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[6174,105,4696,1157,6871,185,10977,119,2468,1030,5746,106,118,251,10975,4573,1584,154,10976,500,45,1412,474],"class_list":["post-2229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-zzzzzzzzz","tag-ashley-callus","tag-australia","tag-australian-institute","tag-brisbane","tag-chandler-aquatic-centre","tag-coach","tag-eddie-sutton","tag-geoff-huegill","tag-grant-hackett","tag-lars-frolander","tag-liesel-jones","tag-melbourne","tag-michael-klim","tag-ncaa","tag-open-championships","tag-queensland","tag-robert-van-der-zant","tag-sprinter","tag-state-age-group","tag-sweden","tag-sydney","tag-the-u-s-open","tag-world-championship"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\r\n