Agencies
RIO DE JANEIRO: Britain’s Adam Peaty set a world record of 57.55 seconds in the men’s 100 metres breaststroke heats at the Rio Olympics yesterday, beating his own mark of 57.92 set in London last year.
Meanwhile, South Korea’s Park Tae-hwan, the 2008 Olympic champion who won a late battle to swim at the Rio Games after appealing against a doping ban, failed to qualify for the men’s 400 metres freestyle finals yesterday.
The 2012 silver medallist finished fourth in his heat, won by China’s world and Olympic champion Sun Yang, but his time of three minutes 45.63 seconds left him 10th overall with only the top eight going through.
Sun, China’s big hope, was fourth fastest overall in a line-up led by Conor Dwyer of the United States with a time of 3:43.42.
Dwyer was followed by Australia’s Mack Horton in 3:43.84 and Italian Gabriele Detti.
Park, the first Korean to claim an Olympic swimming medal when he won the 400 freestyle in Beijing in 2008, completed an 18-month ban imposed by world governing body FINA in March after testing positive for testosterone ahead of the 2014 Asian Games.
Under a controversial Korean Olympic Committee regulation, he was then hit with an additional three-year ban from the national team the day the FINA suspension expired.
That would have ruled him out of contention for Rio but the Court of Arbitration for Sport cleared the 26-year-old to compete.
Park is also due to swim in the 100m, 200m and 1,500m freestyle races in what will be his fourth and final Olympics.
Earlier, Russian swimmer Natalia Lovtsova was reinstated at the last minute to the women’s 100 metres butterfly yesterday after appealing successfully against a doping ban, but trailed in last in her heat. Lovtsova’s inclusion forced officials to hastily reissue the starting list for the event, in a sign of the turmoil prompted by a rush of last-minute appeals by banned Russian competitors.
Breaststroker Yulia Efimova suddenly appeared in the start lists for the 100 metres, whose heats take place on Sunday, and Wednesday’s 200m, the event in which she won an Olympic bronze medal in London in 2012. On Friday her name had been absent from the field for both races.
The build-up to the Rio Games has been overshadowed by revelations of widespread state-sponsored doping in Russia. Under guidelines laid down by the International Olympic Committee, but left ultimately to the discretion of individual sports federations, Russians with past doping convictions were ineligible to compete.
But a number have successfully appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, arguing that once their bans have been served, they should not be punished a second time for the same offence.
Lovtsova came eighth and last in the final heat of the 100m butterfly, won by world champion Sarah Sjostrom of Sweden. She left without speaking to reporters.
Efimova is likely to mount a more powerful challenge in the breaststroke events.
On Friday, after learning of her reinstatement, she posted a picture of herself on Instagram, looking surprised and tearful, with the caption: “I’m going to the Olympics. I couldn’t be more proud and relieved.”
