INDIANAPOLIS, October 9. WITH short course world record-holder Grant Hackett, long course world record-holder Ian Thorpe and American record-holder giving this meet a bye, the men's 400 free was a wide open contest.<\/p>\n
Competitive swimming, like political power, abhors a vaccuum, but the question was: Who would step up to fill the void left by the absence of these three esteemed gentlemen?<\/p>\n
The answer was not long in coming.<\/p>\n
Russia's Yuri Prilukov trailed another swimmer only for the first 50 meters of this race, and then by only one-hundredth of a second at the 50-meter turn. Utilizing powerful, efficient turns, he split 52.98 at the 100 — three-tenths ahead of Kvetoslav Svoboda of the Czech Republic, the early leader.<\/p>\n
The 20 year-old Russian extended that lead to eight-tenths with his 1:49.14 at the 200, as US veteran Chad Carvin took over the second spot. The lead grew to 1.3 seconds at 300 meters.<\/p>\n
Prilukov and Carvin kept pulling away, but in the final 100 meters Svoboda faltered and was overtaken by the USA's Justin Mortimer with one lap to go.<\/p>\n
At the wall it was Prilukov in 3:40.79, followed by Carvin in 3:43.77. Mortimer took the bronze in 3:44.70, 13-hundredths in front of Svoboda.<\/p>\n
After the race, Prilukov simply noted that he's gone faster in the past. Carvin, who said he was "happy with a silver," admitted: "I just wish I could've stayed with the Russian, but the pace was just a little too heavy for me."<\/p>\n
Mortimer commented: "It felt great. This was my first individua medal here…and I just wanted to go out strong and stay with the pack and finish as strong as I could."<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
INDIANAPOLIS, October 9. WITH short course world record-holder Grant Hackett, long course world record-holder Ian Thorpe and American record-holder giving this meet a bye, the men's 400 free was a<\/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":[],"class_list":["post-8230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-zzzzzzzzz"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\r\n