Budapest World Short Course: Day 4 Finals Wrap

NIGHT four of finals delivered two silver medals to the Australian medal tally with Isaac Cooper and the men’s 4x200m free relay team standing on the podium at the Budapest World Short Course Championships.

For Cooper, his silver medal was a case of same time, same event and same medal colour as two years ago.
But this time when Cooper was presented the silver medal for the 50m backstroke there were no tears of frustration.

Tonight, the 20-year-old hit the wall in 22.49secs, a PB but also the same time he also swum in Melbourne at the World Short Course Championships in 2022.

Then, a shattered Cooper fought back tears after he was denied a gold medal after the final had to be re-run.

Cooper had been first home but less than half the field completed the race after an alarm sounded due to a “technical error”.

An hour later, the race was re-run with American Ryan Murphy touching ahead of the Queenslander.

Murphy’s winning time was 22.64 seconds, slower than Cooper’s initial time of 22.49 which would have been a junior world record and a personal best.

But tonight at Duna Arena, Cooper’s 22.49 now stands as his PB, a national and Oceania record.

His silver – and Australia’s second placed 4x200m free relay team – took Australia to 2 gold, 4 silver and 3 bronze.

Neutral athlete Miron Lifintsev broke the World Junior Record to win gold in 22.47 (the old mark of 22.52 set by Cooper in 2022), while Ireland’s Shane Ryan hit the wall in 22.56 to win bronze.

Cooper said: “I am really happy to finally have that time as my official PB … but tonight, that was impressive swimming from everyone. That’s my eight race now and I am so happy with how I have been able to back up and there’s still the 50m freestyle to go.”

“The backstroke is my main event and I think it was what I was naturally put on this earth to do but the 50m freestyle is such a prestigious event … and that is the title I am after … but I am just so happy, it was just such great racing out there.”

And the great racing and Oceania records continued in the men’s 4x200m free relay with Max Giuliani leading off in 1:40.73, a PB that had the Dolphins on world record pace, before Ed Sommerville (1:41.03), Harry Turner (1:42.21) and Elijah Winnington (1:41.57) hung on (6:45.54) to claim silver behind a world record breaking USA (6:40.51) and Italy (6:47.51) third.

In other events; Dolphin flyers Alex Perkins (55.57) and Lily Price (55.74) executed perfect race plans to book into Saturday’s 100m women’s butterfly final but it is going to take something special with American Gretchen Walsh lining up in lane four.

Walsh made it two world records in 35 minutes and qualified fasted for the final with 52.87 – her sixth individual world record of this meet.

The other standout in tonight’s finals was a massive eight-second PB from rookie Tiana Kritzinger – her 15.44.44 placing her fifth in the final of the women’s 1500m. Olympic open water silver medallist Moesha Johnson finished sixth (15:45.07) after her effort in the morning timed heat.

With two days of racing left, a “pleased” Dolphins campaign coach Simon Cusack applauded his rookie-heavy Australian team.

“The rookies have just been so pleasing, they’ve been able to manage their own individual workloads and then play a key role in the relays … we’ve had a really good few days and some will get better the deeper we go into this meet,” Cusack said.

Watch all the action live and free on 9GEM from 7pm AEDT and finals from 3.30am on NINE AEDT.