CANET, France, June 9. AS the second stop of the Mare Nostrum Series came to a close in Canet, France Wednesday night, the women took center stage with a number of down-to-the-wire races and several outstanding performances.<\/p>\n
A newly minted French citizen, Alena Popchanka set a national record in the 100 butterfly, posting a time of 58.72. Formerly of Belarus, which she represented at last summer\u2019s Olympics, Popchanka held off Slovakia\u2019s Martina Moravcova (58.94) and the Netherlands\u2019 Inge Dekker (59.19). Popchanka also placed second in the 400 freestyle, as her effort of 4:12.00 finished behind only Romania\u2019s Camelia Potec (4:11.91).<\/p>\n
Potec added a fourth-place showing in a loaded 200 freestyle. Sweden\u2019s Josefin Lillhage won the four-lap free event in 1:59.02, ahead of the 1:59.14 swim of Poland\u2019s Otylia Jedrzejczak. Costa Rica\u2019s Claudia Poll was third in 1:59.89 and Potec hit the wall in 1:59.94.<\/p>\n
The men\u2019s 200 freestyle didn\u2019t feature the depth of the female field, but South Africa\u2019s Ryk Neethling and Poland\u2019s Pawel Korzeniowski dueled to the wire. Neethling prevailed in 1:49.19 while Korzeniowski was clocked in 1:49.48. Meanwhile, the Ukraine\u2019s Andriy Serdinov won the 100 butterfly (52.19) and Hungary\u2019s Laszlo Cseh, a day after setting a European record in the 400 individual medley, took the 200 I.M. (2:00.23).<\/p>\n
China notched a pair of victories, as Zhang Lin won the men\u2019s 1500 freestyle (15:18.30) and Liu Jing captured first in the women\u2019s 200 I.M. (2:16.89). Sweden\u2019s Therese Alshammar and the Netherlands\u2019 Marleen Veldhuis tied for first in the women\u2019s 50 free (25.04) and France\u2019s David Maitre won the men\u2019s 50 free (22.50). Esther Baron supplied France with a triumph in the women\u2019s 200 backstroke (2:13.14).<\/p>\n
Other victors from Canet were Poland\u2019s Beata Kaminska in the women\u2019s 100 breast (1:10.07), Great Britain\u2019s Chris Cook in the men\u2019s 100 breast (1:01.77) and Romania\u2019s Razvan Florea in the men\u2019s 200 back (1:58.97).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
CANET, France, June 9. AS the second stop of the Mare Nostrum Series came to a close in Canet, France Wednesday night, the women took center stage with a number<\/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":[10,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world","category-zzzzzzzzz"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\r\n