By Stephen J. Thomas<\/p>\n
SYDNEY, March 12. GRANT Hackett won his first Aussie 400-meter feestyle title way back in 1997 and of course took his second last year in sensational circumstances when Ian Thorpe was DQ\u2019ed in the heats of the Olympic Trials.<\/p>\n
Hackett was the favorite to go on to take the World Championship title in Perth after his first win but the then 15-year-old Thorpe powered past him in the final lap to take the first of three consecutive crowns in the eight-lap event. Hackett has been the bridesmaid each time. <\/p>\n
Saturday, the 24-year-old Queenslander made it clear he will be looking for gold in Montreal this July when he powered to an impressive 3:44.44 – just over a second outside his silver medal winning time in Athens. Nic Sprenger stepped up a gear to record a PR 3:49.59 and also qualified for Montreal while former Canadian Kurtis MacGillivary took third in 3:51.83.<\/p>\n
In the women\u2019s final, Athens representative Linda MacKenzie had to call on all her determination to get past 16-year-old rookie Hayley Reddaway in the final lap. MacKenzie clocked 4:09.39 (not far outside her PR 4:08.46 set in the prelims in Athens) to edge out an impressive swim from the young Victorian 4:09.56 (7th all-time Aussie performer) who had showed her potential at the recent Junior Pan Pac Championships in Hawaii. <\/p>\n
In semifinal action:<\/p>\n
Jessica Schipper (58.68), Alice Mills (58.75, PR) and Libby Lenton (58.92) were the fastest three qualifiers for the 100 butterfly, setting up a world-class final Sunday. Lenton also clocked a final leg relay split of 54.05 to help her club Commercial to a new national 400 freestyle relay record.<\/p>\n
Brooke Hanson was impressive clocking 2:14.17 to easily head Olympic finalist Lara Carroll 2:15.03 in the 200 IM. Hanson has a PR 2:13.14 in winning this title from Alice Mills last year but decided to skip the event in Athens to concentrate on the breaststroke events. Mills, the national record-holder at 2:12.47 has decided to skip this event to concentrate of the fly. <\/p>\n
Jim Piper looked very sharp, clocking 1:01.73 to head national record-holder Brenton Rickard (1:02.15) in the 100 breaststroke.<\/p>\n
Olympic 50 freestyle finalist Brett Hawke dominated the semifinals of the 50 fly splashing a PR 24.05. Reigning world champ Matt Welsh won\u2019t be doing a repeat after being DQ\u2019ed for an early start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Stephen J. Thomas SYDNEY, March 12. GRANT Hackett won his first Aussie 400-meter feestyle title way back in 1997 and of course took his second last year in sensational<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72798,"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-9102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","category-zzzzzzzzz"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\r\n