By John Lohn<\/p>\n
MONTREAL, Canada, July 30. THE big guns are lurking. That\u2019s the best way to describe Sunday night\u2019s final of the men\u2019s 50-meter backstroke. The men occupying the third through fifth positions after the semifinals are the major names in the event. And, it is highly probable that the gold medal will go to one of those athletes.<\/p>\n
Australia\u2019s Matt Welsh, long a major player on the international dorsal scene, recorded the third-fastest time of the semifinals, as he got to the wall in 25.36. That swim trailed the top qualifying time of 25.11, uncorked by Greece\u2019s Aristeidis Grigoriadis. Seeded second behind the Greek is Great Britain\u2019s Liam Tancock, who covered his lap in 25.22.<\/p>\n
The world-record holder and defending champion, Germany\u2019s Thomas Rupprath notched the fourth-fastest qualifying time, as he stopped the clock in 25.52, just ahead of the 25.55 of Aaron Peirsol, already the champion in the 100 and 200 distances. Peirsol lowered his world record in the 200 back on Friday night. Japan\u2019s Junichi Miyashita (25.58) was sixth after the semifinals and American Randall Bal was seventh in 25.60. Bal won the world title in this event in 2001. Taking the final spot for the championship heat was Germany\u2019s Marco DiCarli (25.69).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By John Lohn MONTREAL, Canada, July 30. THE big guns are lurking. That\u2019s the best way to describe Sunday night\u2019s final of the men\u2019s 50-meter backstroke. The men occupying the<\/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-9836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world","category-zzzzzzzzz"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\r\n