Liam Tancock and David Davies rescued what has been an otherwise wretched competition for Britain on the last night of competition at the World Cchampionships in Montreal. The duo took bronze medals in the 50m backstroke and 1500m freestyle respectively, as the meet ended leaving Britain with an overall tally of three third places. There was also a 6th placed finish in the 50m Breaststroke for Kate Haywood.
Davies swam an incredibly mature race in the 1500m as he reprised his bronze medal wining performance form Athens. It was almost one better for the young Welshman, who had looked set for the runners up at one point only to see it wrested from him at the death. In fact the race produced the same first four finishers as the Olympic final with Grant Hackett taking gold and Larsen Jensen the silver, while Yuri Prilukov took the fourth placed finish.
Early in the race concerned British supporters were dreading a repeat of earlier performances from these championships as Davies lagged behind the early leaders over the opening 400m. Indeed, at that point he lagged behind in 4th position, over a second behind third placed Prilukov, but did not panic as he gradually brought himself level with the Russian by the halfway point. Hackett had disappeared into the distance ahead of the whole field by this point, and Davies trailed second placed Jensen by 3.5 seconds with half the race to go.
At this point he dug in superbly, cutting down the American’s advantage every lap until he overhauled him coming into the 1400m turn. That slender advantage was increased over the penultimate length to leave Davies with a lead of half a second at the final turn. Jensen, a great competitor in his own right, then produced a stunning finishing burst, taking 1.1sedonds out of Davies in the final 50m to snatch back second place, posting 14:47.58 to Davies’ 14:48.11. Prilukov came in a further three seconds behind, while Hackett took his third individual gold medal with a winning time of 14.42.58.
Earlier in the session Tancock had built on his impressive form over 100m to claim a bronze medal in the one lap event. Having qualified second fastest for the final, the Loughborough swimmer was not overawed b those around him and was in contention throughout the race. In a desperately close finish, Tancock got his hand to the wall just fractionally behind winner, Greece’s Aristeidis Grigoriadis and runner up Matt Welsh of Australia, just missing out by 0.17 of a second time of 25.02 was his third personal best of the week and his second British record.
There was no fairytale finish for Kate Haywood, but she acquitted herself well in the final of the 50m breaststroke, where she finished 6th in a time of 31.49, just outside the personal best she set in the semi finals. In the same race, Britain lost its only long course world record when Australia’s Jade Edmistone eclipsed the existing standard of Zoe Baker in a time of 30.45.