Friday, 11 June 2010 11:53
Le Clos fights for silver in Barcelona
In 2009 Chad Le Clos made his name by winning Silver in the 400m individual medley in the Mare Nostrum in Barcelona. Tonight he repeated that feat by clocking 4:20.23 for the eight lengths of the pool.
This after Cameron van der Burgh secured Bronze in the 50m Breaststroke with a time of 28.30sec bringing the Bronze Medal tally for South Africa to four. Olympic and World Championship 100m Breaststroke swimmer Kosuke Kitajima (a training partner of Van der Burgh) was rampant going under 28 second for the win, touching the wall in 27.96sec ahead of Dragos Agache of Romania (28.01).
Then it was the turn of 18 year Chad Le Clos. From the minute the swimmers left the blocks, there were only two in it, Thiago Parreira (Brazil) and Le Clos. Parreira was clearly in a class of his own and progressively pulled ahead of the South African. But Le Clos is a fighter. With 100m to go he was almost 7 seconds behind Parreira, but started to close the gap a bit. With 50m the lead had shrunk to 5 seconds and when Le Clos touched the wall in second place he had reduced the deficit to just under 4 seconds. Parreira won in a time of 4:16.85 with Le Clos clocking 4:20.23sec.
The silver medal was Le Clos’ second of the meet after winning Bronze on Wednesday (9 June) in the 200m Butterfly.
The meeting in Barcelona ended tonight and the contingent now moves to Canet for the final leg of the Mare Nostrum from 12-13 June and then off to Sette Colli in Italy from the 17-19 June before the 21 swimmers move to Koper in Slovenia for a training camp from 21 June to 2 July before returning home.
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