By John Lohn
\nPhotos by Peter H. Bick<\/p>\n
MONTREAL, Canada, July 31. SEVERAL major names lined up for Sunday night\u2019s final of the men\u2019s 50-meter backstroke. But, the gold medal wasn\u2019t draped around any of their necks. Instead, Greece\u2019s Aristeidis Grigoriadis collected his first world title, winning the one-lap sprint in 24.95, just ahead of the 24.99 performance turned in by Australian veteran Matt Welsh.<\/p>\n
Grigoriadis was the top seed heading into the final, but was facing a field that included the world-record holder in the event and a pair of former world champs. It didn\u2019t matter, though, as Grigoriadis lunged to the wall before the opposition. While Welsh picked up the silver medal, the bronze medal went to Great Britain\u2019s Liam Tancock in 25.02.<\/p>\n
The 2001 world champion, the United States\u2019 Randall Bal took fourth place with an effort of 25.23, just ahead of the fifth-place showing from American Aaron Peirsol (25.30), already the champion in the 100 and 200 distances of the dorsal event. The defending champ and world-record holder, Germany\u2019s Thomas Rupprath finished sixth in 25.38.<\/p>\n
Japan\u2019s Junichi Miyashita claimed the seventh position, behind a time of 25.85, and the eighth slot was filled by Marco DiCarli of Germany, who covered the distance in 26.48, nearly a second slower than his swim from the semifinal round.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By John Lohn Photos by Peter H. Bick MONTREAL, Canada, July 31. SEVERAL major names lined up for Sunday night\u2019s final of the men\u2019s 50-meter backstroke. But, the gold medal<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72971,"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-9841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","category-zzzzzzzzz"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\r\n