South Africa’s gold-medal swimming duo Ryk Neethling and Roland Schoeman are through to Tuesday’s semifinal of the men’s 100m freestyle, but not without some anxious moments for the supporters.
Neethling shared the seventh heat with the powerful Pieter van den Hoogenband, and turned third behind Slovakian Peter Mankoc and Frederick Bousquet of France.
On the return it was Van den Hoogenband and Neethling who carved their way to first and second in 48.7 seconds and 48.85 seconds respectively.
”I’m … now looking forward to the semifinals tonight,” said Neethling before quickly moving through the media zone.
From the time Schoeman walked on to the pool deck he looked uncharacteristically preoccupied. Turning in second he had the fourth-slowest return 50 to finish fourth in a heat won by Australian Ian Thorpe in a time of 49,17 seconds.
With the times in the past four heats all faster than Schoeman’s 49,68 seconds, he waited in apprehension before confirming his qualification with a 12th-place ranking.
The prime goal of the heat was qualification with the least amount of effort, but Schoeman, the top-ranked semifinalist, will need to be sharper to make it through to Wednesday’s final.
Sydney silver medallist Terence Parkin made the cut for Tuesday’s 200m breaststroke semifinal from lane one of the fourth heat. After a slow first hundred, Parkin impressively moved through to fourth position during the third lap before finishing fourth behind Japan’s Kosuke Kitajima in 2:11,97, in the second-fastest heat of the day.
Parkin, who has looked to be nowhere near the same form as in Sydney, signalled that he was happy with his time of 2:14,12. — Sapa