By John Lohn<\/p>\n
MONTREAL, Canada, July 24. LAST summer, Katie Hoff ventured to Athens without any international experience. The result was a flameout in the 400 individual medley, but an appearance in the finals of the 200 I.M. Obviously, the tutorial from the Olympic Games has paid dividends for the 16-year-old from the North Baltimore Aquatic Club.<\/p>\n
Looking every bit a veteran of international competition, Hoff cruised to the top seed for Monday night\u2019s finals of the 200 I.M. Scheduled to swim three individual events this week, Hoff unloaded a 2:11.71 performance in winning her semifinal. Sitting third after the opening leg of butterfly, Hoff eased into the lead during the backstroke and never relinquished control. She was on pace for a 2:10-esque clocking heading into the freestyle, but shut it down.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a distinct possibility that Hoff will become the first American woman to move into the 2:10s and an outside chance that she could erase the world record of 2:09.72, set in 1997 by China\u2019s Wu Yanyan. The championship record of 2:10.75, set by Yana Klochkova in 2003, is definitely in the scope. Hoff is just waiting to fire.<\/p>\n
Kirsty Coventry, the bronze medalist in the event from Athens, was the second-fastest qualifier, going 2:13.40 and was followed by Australia\u2019s Lara Carroll (2:13.68) and Brooke Hanson (2:13.83). Poland\u2019s Katarzyna Baranowska was fifth in 2:13.86. Rounding out the top eight were the United States\u2019 Whitney Myers (2:14.03), Japan\u2019s Maiko Fujino (2:15.13) and Hungary\u2019s Zsuzsanna Jakabos (2:16.30).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By John Lohn MONTREAL, Canada, July 24. LAST summer, Katie Hoff ventured to Athens without any international experience. The result was a flameout in the 400 individual medley, but an<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72935,"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-9764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","category-zzzzzzzzz"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\r\n