Relay team ready for round two

Swimming Australia
Published: Dec 14, 2012 02:13:54 AM Updated: Mar 19, 2013 09:28:15 AM

Following last night’s bronze medal winning performance in the men’s 4x100m freestyle relay, the men’s 4x200m freestyle relay team have qualified fastest for tonight’s final just 0.01 of a second ahead of team USA.

Tommaso D’Orsogna, Jarrod Killey, Travis Mahoney and Robert Hurley took an early lead but were then forced to chase down the American’s in the final leg to take top spot.

After some superb underwater work from Hurley the boys hit the wall in 7:01.77, just touching out USA by the smallest of margins and securing prime position for the final tonight.

Also progressing through in top spot to the women’s 100m freestyle semi-final is 26-year-old Marieke Guehrer who stopped the clock at 53.26 to qualify 0.06 of a second ahead of China’s Yi Tang in 53.32.

Dual Olympian Angie Bainbridge hit the wall in 54.10 putting her in 13^th spot leading into the semis.

Bronze medallist from the meet already Kyle Richardson just snuck into the semi-finals for the men’s 50m freestyle clocking 21.78, enough to see him move through in 16^th position.

Australia will have four backstrokers looking for glory in their respective finals with Grace Loh and Rachel Goh going head to head in the women’s 100m backstroke and Ashley Delaney and Robert Hurley facing off in the corresponding men’s event.

Victorian Sarah Katsoulis will go into the final of the women’s 50m breaststroke ranked fifth following last night’s impressive semi-final swim. She will have to face Olympic Champion from the 100m breaststroke, 15-year-old Ruta Meilutyte.

Melbourne swimmer Mahoney was unlucky not to go through to the final of the men’s 400m individual medley, his time of 4:09.59 had him ranked ninth overall.

Queenslander Ellen Fullerton swam a personal best time of 1:02.03 in the women’s 100m individual medley while Katsoulis also impressed in her heat clocking a 1:02.14.

While Brianna Throssell took on the butterfly sprint, stopping the clock at 26.54 in the heats of the women’s 50m butterfly.  All three girls just missed semi-final swims.

The heats will be broadcast on ONE HD at 1:00am AEDST leading into live finals at 4:00am AEDST.

Full results are available at http://www.fina.org