![\"Diana](\"\/\/vmrw8k5h.tinifycdn.com\/media\/Munz-KellerFinish.jpg\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Phillip Whitten<\/p>\n
LONG BEACH, July 13. FOR 2000 Olympic gold and silver medallists Brooke Bennett and Diana Munz, the 800m free was their last chance to punch their tickets to Athens.<\/p>\n
The prognosis was not good, as both young women were swimming well off their best, while Kalyn Keller and Kaitlin Sandeno were on a roll.<\/p>\n
Bennett, Munz and Keller all took the race out hard, but it was 16 year-old Kate Ziegler who led at 100 in 1:00.89. But the lead did not last long.<\/p>\n
At 200 meters, it was Bennett and Munz turning first and second, separated by only one-hundredth of a second. Keller lurked only six-tenths of a second behind.
\nAt 300 meters, Bennett had lengthened her lead to more than half a second over Munz, with Keller another three-tenths back.<\/p>\n
Bennett maintained her lead at the halfway mark, turning in 4:12.09, as Keller overtook Munz and moved into second. Then Keller and Munz made their moves, going 1:02.83 and 1:02.93 for their fifth 100, while Bennett responded only with a 1:04.32. At the 600, Keller was clinging to a lead of just 6-hundredths over Munz, while Bennett was 1.2 seconds in arrears.<\/p>\n
Munz forged in front of a grudging Keller at 650, while Bennett kept losing ground. For the next 150 meters, Munz and Keller went stroke-for-stroke, while Bennett was unable to muster the strength to challenge the leaders.<\/p>\n
At the wall, it was Munz first in 8:26.06, with Keller in 8:26.33, the world\u2019s second and third fastest times this year. Bennett finished in 8:29.39, just ahead of Ziegler, perhaps America\u2019s next great distance star, at 8:30.92.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Phillip Whitten LONG BEACH, July 13. FOR 2000 Olympic gold and silver medallists Brooke Bennett and Diana Munz, the 800m free was their last chance to punch their tickets<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71756,"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":[],"class_list":["post-7628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-zzzzzzzzz"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\r\n