DUBLIN, Ireland, March 2. TWO national records fell this morning in the preliminaries of the Irish Olympic Trials, one of which was previously held by an Olympic champion. The meet is being held in long course meters format.<\/p>\n
In the women's 100 butterfly, Bethany Carson swam a 1:00.58 to erase Michelle Smith's record of 1:00.59 by the slimmest of margins. Smith swam the time in 1996, according to Swim Ireland.<\/p>\n
Smith was a three-time Olympic champion (200 IM, 400 IM, 400 free) at the 1996 Games, and came under suspicion at the Games for her rapid improvement in less than a year. In 1998, she was given a four-year suspension for submitting a urine sample tainted with alcohol during a routine drug test.<\/p>\n
Melanie Nocher reset her own national record in the women's 200 backstroke with a 2:11.71, lowering the mark by .03.<\/p>\n
The Irish Olympic team will be selected from swimmers who swim faster than the FINA “A” standard in their events. So far, no one has met those times after two days of competition. Grainne Murphy and Barry Murphy have been pre-selected to swim in London after swimming under the “A” standard at previous meets. Grainne Murphy did so in the 800 freestyle at the Dutch long course championships in December, swimming an 8:31.14, well under the “A” standard of 8:33.84.<\/p>\n
Barry Murphy achieved his time in March 2011 at the Indianapolis Grand Prix, swimming a 1:00.77, just under the qualifying time of 1:00.79.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DUBLIN, Ireland, March 2. TWO national records fell this morning in the preliminaries of the Irish Olympic Trials, one of which was previously held by an Olympic champion. The meet<\/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":[10,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world","category-zzzzzzzzz"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\r\n