Australia’s 4 x 200m women claim gold and smash world record

August 14, 2008

In what had not been a good day at the pool so far for Australia the 4 x 200m freestyle team has changed all that.

Australia were hoping for three gold medals in the pool today. They have had to settle for one.

Swimming a world record time of 7:44.31, down from the previous record of 7:50.09, the team of Stephanie Rice, Bronte Barratt, Kylie Palmer and Linda Mackenzie have triumphed over China. The winning margin was 1.62 seconds. The USA took bronze.

France narrowly lead after the first leg with Coralie Balmy just 0.03 ahead of Stephanie Rice after the French girl clocked 1:56.57. By the next leg Australia held the lead and never looked back.

Other teams had individuals who swam faster times than the Aussie girls however this is a team event and overall the combination was too strong for the rest of the field. It was China’s Pang Jiaying who swam the fastest individual leg as she anchored the Chinese team with a 1:54.39 leg.

Stephanie Rice has now bagged three gold medals following her two medley gold’s she won on other days at the Beijing Olympic swim meet. So far all of Australia’s gold medals have come from the swimming pool and all have been won by the women.

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Written by rob · Filed Under Swimming, swimming beijing olympics