{"id":584769,"date":"2024-04-27T08:54:49","date_gmt":"2024-04-27T15:54:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/?p=584769"},"modified":"2024-04-27T12:08:44","modified_gmt":"2024-04-27T19:08:44","slug":"lukas-martens-rockets-to-the-top-of-the-200-free-rankings-melvin-imoudu-lowers-german-50m-breaststroke-record","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/lukas-martens-rockets-to-the-top-of-the-200-free-rankings-melvin-imoudu-lowers-german-50m-breaststroke-record\/","title":{"rendered":"Lukas M\u00e4rtens Rockets To The Top Of The 200 Free Rankings; Melvin Imoudu Sets German 50m Breaststroke Mark"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lukas M\u00e4rtens Rockets To The Top Of The 200 Free Rankings; Melvin Imoudu Lowers German 50m Breaststroke Record<\/h4>\n

Lukas M\u00e4rtens<\/strong> rocketed to the top of the 200 free rankings after firing off a 1:44.14 PB and Melvin Imoudu<\/strong> lowered the national 50m breaststroke record at the German Championships<\/strong> in Berlin.<\/p>\n

M\u00e4rtens served notice of his intentions in the prelims when he fired off 1:44.89, then the second-fastest time of his career behind the 1:44.79 he posted leading off the German 4×2 quartet that finished seventh at the 2023 World Championships<\/strong> in Fukuoka.<\/p>\n

Splits:<\/strong> 24.27\/50.71 (26.44)\/1:17.57 (26.86)\/ 1:44.14 (26.57)<\/p>\n

M\u00e4rtens went through the first 100 in 50.71 before coming back in 53.43 to\u00a0dislodge\u00a0Matt Richards<\/strong> at the top of the rankings with the 2023 world champion having gone 1:44.69 to win the British Olympic trials in early April.<\/p>\n

Coached by Bernd Berkhahn<\/strong>, the 22-year-old’s performance was the 14th fastest in history and the third swiftest since the supersuits were consigned to history after the landscape was distorted in 2008 and 2009.<\/p>\n

Since then only David Popovici<\/strong> – with his 1:42.97 at the 2022 Europeans – and Yannick Agnel<\/strong> who went 1:43.14 at the 2012 Olympics, have eclipsed M\u00e4rtens’ time.<\/p>\n

It followed his 3:40.33 in the 400 free where he went within 0.26 of Paul Biedermann’s<\/strong> world record of 3:40.07, propelling himself to fourth performer all-time behind his fellow German, Ian Thorpe<\/strong> and Sun Yang<\/strong>, the man still towing a doping ban.<\/p>\n

Danny Schmidt<\/strong> (1:48.61) and Philipp Peschke<\/strong> (1:49.00) were second and third respectively with M\u00e4rtens set to be joined in the individual event in Paris by Rafael Miroslaw<\/strong> who’d already posted 1:45.84.<\/p>\n

Imoudu went 26.62 to slice 0.12 from the 50 breaststroke standard of 26.74 he set at the Eindhoven Qualification Meet<\/strong> earlier this month.<\/p>\n

Isabel Gose<\/strong> made it three wins in as many races as she added the 200 free to her 400 and 1500 titles.<\/p>\n

She went inside the QT of 1:57.26 in prelims where she posted 1:57.06, a season’s best by more than three seconds.<\/p>\n

Come the final and she stormed to victory in a PB of 1:56.66 to go third in the all-time German rankings behind Annika Lurz,<\/strong> whose 1:55.68\u00a0 national record has stood since the 2007 worlds, and Franziska van Almsick<\/strong> who posted 1:56.64 at the 2002 European<\/strong> Championships<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Julia Mrozinski\u00a0<\/strong>bagged the second Olympic spot after following Gose home in 1:57.22 while the tussle for a 4×2 relay berth was decided by calculating the average time of prelims and final.<\/p>\n

Isabel Gose 1:56.86 (final 1:56.66\/preliminaries 1:57.06)<\/p>\n

Julia Mrozinski 1:57.91 (1:57.22\/1:58.59)<\/p>\n

Nele Schulze 1:59.11 (1:59.34\/1:58.88)<\/p>\n

Nicole Maier 1:59.24 (1:58.39\/2:00.08)<\/p>\n

Maya Werner 1:59.30 (1:59.54\/1:59.06)<\/p>\n

Nina Holt 2:00.02 (2:00.14\/1:59.89)<\/p>\n