2 World Records in the DNF finals of the AIDA Pool World Championship 2016
The reults of this morning DNF finals from Turku are now out and we have new World Records for both women and men categories! The Polish Magdalena Solich does 3m more than the previous DNF World Record and sets the bar to 185m now for the girls! On the men side, Mateusz Malina did it again! After his 232m DNF World Record from Thuesday qualifications, he made it to the 244m mark with a white card! He is elated to have finally broken Dave Mullins 232m national record (NZ) which was greater* than the World Record for so many years.
With both gold medals and the women bronze medal of Julia Kozerska (167m), Poland clearly dominated the DNF discipline today!
Except the World Record, the women finals seen also 5 national records: Anna Marie Christiansen for Danemark, Lydia Horel with 165m for France, Alice Hickson with 180m for UK (ex gold medalist in Belgrade), Tomomi Hamazaki with 160m for Japan and Elisabeth Skeparnia with 128m for Greece. After the Danish Anna Marie Christiansen (157m) beat Anette Rafen Otttzen ( 156m) by 1 meter, Anette jokingly said it was unfair since Anna is so much taller! - no comments from the jury yet :)
A new national record came also on the men side from Ulf Lindbergh who pushed the Sweden DNF challenge to 195m.
All the girls from the A final reached new personal bests and all girls from both A and B finals had white cards! Tomomi Hamazaki from the B finals with her Japanese NR of 160m was good enough for the bronze medal in men's final due to red cards by the top contenders: Goran Colak, Alex Bubenchvkov and Alex Kostvshen.
AIDA President Carla Hanson told us it was an amazing day with huge performances and athletes attribute it to the organization: "fast pool , so well organized in every detail - best World Championships ever!"
*the 232m DNF performance of Dave Mulins from 2009 did not qualify for the "World Record" status (due to the WR jury requirements) and until today the New Zeeland NDF national record was bigger than the official World Record.