World Championships, Day 4 Finals: Neutral Athletes Blast Field For Mixed Medley Relay Gold in Return to Major Competition
For the last three years, Russian swimmers have been almost completely absent from international swimming competition, exiled due to their country’s invasion of Ukraine. Late last year, the country’s swimmers re-emerged under the moniker “Neutral Athletes B” at the Short Course World Championships, winning six gold medals and earning 10 total podium finishes.
Now, the neutral athletes have made their mark at the long course Worlds, earning a resounding victory in the mixed 400 medley relay. Historic splits from the team’s male swimmers provided an advantage of more than two seconds, and even the powerhouse Chinese squad, with three of the four swimmers returning from an Olympic-silver-medal-wining team, was unable to keep pace.
Miron Lifintsev opened up for the neutral athletes on backstroke and clocked 51.78, exceeding the gold-medal-winning time in the individual event (Pieter Coetze at 51.85). If mixed relay leadoff times were to officially count, Lifintsev’s mark would make him the second-fastest performer in history behind Thomas Ceccon.
Kirill Prigoda followed with a 57.56 breaststroke split. Prigoda was disqualified in the 100 breast final after initially touching fourth, but his mark here far exceeded the 58.14 of gold medalist Qin Haiyang and the 58.63 of silver medalist Nicolo Martinenghi. The neutral team then rolled out two less experienced women on the back half, but Daria Klepkova, fifth in the 100 fly, threw down a 55.97 split before Daria Trofimova came home in 52.66.
After swimming under world-record pace for almost the entire race, Trofimova could not keep up down the stretch, but the neutral athletes still finished in 3:37.97 for gold by more than two seconds. While a half-second off the world record, the team beat the championship record of 3:38.43 set by the Americans in 2017.
In the aftermath, the team’s celebration did not include the national flags immediately given to winners in every other event in Singapore. The swimmers hugged each other and their coaches but refrained particularly strong emotions with many days of racing still tocome.
“I can say I feel nothing. I don’t know what to say. I’m not happy. I’m not sad. It’s the middle of the competition and the longer we go on winning, the better it will be,” Lifintsev said. “It’s huge result and I couldn’t do it in (my individual) race. Something was going wrong (for me), but right now all is going great.”
Prigoda said, “It’s a great moment, but we are all focused for the next day, so we have many interesting events in the future. I will swim breaststroke events tomorrow, and I will try my very best.”
Silver went to China in 3:39.99 with Xu Jiayu, Qin, Zhang Yufei and Wu Qingfeng. Xu struggled with a 53.23 on the backstroke leg, a full second slower than he went in the Olympic final, and once Qin was well behind Prigoda on the breaststroke leg, gold was out of the question. Following the race, the Chinese swimmers admitted their disappointment in failing to match their best efforts.
“Rather than say our competitors were fast, I think it’s probably more accurate to say that we’re not in our top form. For future races, I think we’re still capable of being very competitive,” Qin said. “Before the race, we were all under some pressure. We wanted to fight for it, we wanted to win, but I don’t think I have any regrets as to how tonight’s races went.”
In somewhat of a surprise, Canada reached the podium with a time of 3:40.90, marking the country’s first medal in Singapore outside of the two golds won by Summer McIntosh. Veteran Kylie Masse led off in 58.69, and she was followed by Oliver Dawson on breaststroke. The team was in seventh place before Josh Liendo broke out a 49.64 butterfly split, a mark only surpassed by Caeleb Dressel and Maxime Grousset, and Taylor Ruck sprinted past Australia coming home to secure bronze.
“I was just trying to catch my breath still, to be honest, but trying to scream as loud as I could for Tay and smacking on the blocks and just knowing it was so close,” Masse said. “It literally comes down to the final touch and seventh of a hundred, I think, was the difference between third and fourth. So just trying to give Taylor as much energy as we could.”
The Netherlands got off to a poor start, but Marrit Steenbergen blasted a 51.91 split coming home to put the team in fourth place, only seven hundredths behind Canada. Australia’s Kaylee McKeown led off in 57.65, only a half-second slower than her winning time from the individual event a day earlier, but her teammates were unable to keep pace.
Last year at the Paris Olympics, the United States edged China by 0.12 in one of the best races of the Games, but a rematch was derailed when the American team failed to advance out of prelims. With both American representatives in the men’s 100 backstroke struggling, the U.S. coaches opted for 200-meter specialist Keaton Jones on that leg in prelims while Torri Huske, still recovering from the stomach illness that has plagued the team, had a poor butterfly leg. That doomed the team to a 10th-place finish and no finals swim, denying a likely medal opportunity.
