By Phillip Whitten
\nPhotos by Peter Bick<\/p>\n
INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana, April 5. THE women\u2019s 200-meter breaststroke shaped up to be the evening\u2019s closest and most exciting event, and it fully lived up to expectations.<\/p>\n
A five-woman brawl was what was expected. What we got was a four-woman shoot-out as Stanford\u2019s Caroline Bruce did not have quite enough left after winning both breaststroke events at the NCAA .Championships a fortnight ago.<\/p>\n
Eighteen year-old Rebecca Soni, the top qualifier, took the race out hard, turning first at the 50 in 33.56, half a second ahead of Tara Kirk at 34.00. Kristen Caverly was next at 34.04 with Megan Jendrick fourth in 34.23, swimming well within herself.<\/p>\n
Soni kept the pressure on, lengthening her advantage at the 100 with her 1:10.11 split, followed by Kirk (1:11.13), Caverly (1:11.50) and Jendrick (1:11.92).<\/p>\n
The three veterans, Olympians all, made their move on the third lap with Kirk slipping into the lead at the turn in 1:48.61, six-hundredths ahead of Soni, who still led Caverly (1:49.14) and Jendrick (1:49.67).<\/p>\n
Jendrick had the fastest final 50, but it was Kirk who touched first in 2:26.64, just off her PR. Caverly made it one-two for Stanford with a PR 2:27.31, Soni hung on for third with her PR, 2:27.83, while Jendrick touched fourth in 2:27.94. <\/p>\n
Bruce was fifth in 2:31.38, giving Stanford three of the top five finishers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Phillip Whitten Photos by Peter Bick INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana, April 5. THE women\u2019s 200-meter breaststroke shaped up to be the evening\u2019s closest and most exciting event, and it fully lived<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72879,"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":[7,10,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-usa","category-world","category-zzzzzzzzz"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\r\n