WA Swimmers Complete FINA World Cup Series with Medal Haul

The FINA World Cup series ended in Singapore over the weekend with another medal haul for WA’s attending swimmers.

 

Olympian Grant Irvine secured a double in the 100 and 200 fly, with Nic Brown taking second place in the 200m.

 

Holly Barratt continued her medal winning run in Asia, collecting gold in the 50m backstroke with further medals in the free, fly and mixed medley relay.

 

There was also a World Cup gold medal for distance swimmer Ben Roberts who took out the 1500m freestyle.

 

Having relocated to Perth in late 2018, Irvine has found a solid groove of form over the FINA World Cup series in Asia, and he was once again a major threat in the butterfly events.

 

He won the 100m fly final by reversing his head to head battle with Hungarian Szebasztian Szabo – who had beaten him a week earlier in China.

 

In Singapore, Irvine managed to shave extra time off his two-lap effort, winning in 51.26 which was a razor-thin .02 of a second quicker than Szabo.

 

 

In the 200m fly final, Irvine enjoyed a safer winning margin, hitting the wall roughly half a second faster than his WA colleague Brown – who had taken fifth place in the 100m final. Irvine’s winning time was 1:56.77.

 

Holly Barratt earned a full suite of medals for a second successive meet, with the Commonwealth Games representative winning the 50 back, taking silver in the 100m free and earning bronze in the 50m free.

 

Barratt also collected a silver medal in the 4x100m mixed medley, with Mitch Larkin, Emily Seebohm and Grant Irvine combining to clock 3:53.09. Gold went to the USA relay team.

 

Ben Roberts is quickly establishing a reputation as one of the country’s fastest emerging distance freestylers. He competed at the World University Games earlier in the year, whilst in Singapore, he was in a class of his own in taking gold in the 1500m freestyle in 15:21.58.

 

He was over 13 seconds clear of Germany’s Henning Bennet Muhlleitner in second.