DISAPPOINTING START FOR BRITAIN IN CHINA
Great Britain made a disappointing start to the World Short
Course Championships in Shanghai on Wednesday, with all three
swimmers failing to progress from the semi-final stage.
Double Commonwealth gold medallist Chris Cook was unable
to transfer his impressive long course form into the 25 metre
pool in the 100m breaststroke, finishing outside the top eight
qualifiers along with teammate James Gibson.
Gibson (Loughborough) clocked 59.60sec to finish 9th in the
semi-finals - 0.13sec adrift of qualification - with Cook
(City of Newcastle) just inches behind in 59.65sec to take
10th place.
Ukrainian Oleg Lisogor qualified fastest in a new championship
record time of 58.32sec.
"It was a bit disappointing tonight because I knew I
was in with a shot of a medal," Gibson said. "It
was a tough field and if you let them get away like I did,
you can't catch up and you miss out."
Cook said he was let down by his performance after winning
two golds at the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne recently.
"The sign of a good competitor is one that can perform
great, but the sign of an exceptional one is the guy who can
get back in the pool and do it again," he said.
"My emotions have been up and down since Melbourne,
and I guess I just wasn't able to get it together this time,
but it's not over yet."
In a tough field, teenager Kate Haywood failed to replicate
her medal-winning form of the last championships in the 50m
breaststroke. The 19-year-old from Loughborough University
missed Thursday's final by 0.13sec, finishing a disappointing
9th place in the semi-finals in 31.51sec.
In Wednesday's heats, Liam Tancock (Loughborough) missed
out on the 100m backstroke semi-finals, finishing 18th in
53.90sec, a second slower than his best, while Rebecca Cooke
(City of Glasgow) was 11th in the women's 400m individual
medley in 4:40.61sec.
Cooke will be aiming for her first world short course championship
medal when she competes in her main event, the 800m freestyle,
on Thursday.
Also on Thursday, veteran sprinter Mark Foster (University
of Bath) is due to race in the qualification stages of the
50m freestyle -- an event he has won four times -- while Melanie
Marshall (Loughborough) is set to compete in the heats of
the women's the 100m freestyle.
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