Swimming - Samuele Rossi breaks 50m breaststroke record |20 November 2017

Samuele Rossi has broken his long course 50m breaststroke national record in the Fina/Airweave Swimming World Cup series 2017.

Competing in the eighth and final stop of the series in Singapore at the weekend, Rossi took the start of the open category 50m breaststroke and pulverised his Seychelles record with a time of 29.50 seconds after touching the wall in eighth place in heat number two on Saturday. His final standing was 23rd out of 38 swimmers.

This was the first time Rossi had dipped below the 30-second mark and his previous record of 30.75 seconds set in July 2017 is now history.

Rossi, who is currently studying and training in Phuket, Thailand, told Sports NATION through Whatsapp that he feels proud to have beaten the record.

The 50m breaststroke gold medal went to Kirill Prigoda of Russia with a time of 25.80 seconds, followed in second and third places by Ilya Shymanovich (Belorussia, 26.23 seconds) and Koseki Yasushir (Japan, 26.25 seconds)

Yesterday, Rossi swam the 200m breaststroke and clocked 2 minutes 32.63 seconds (2:32.63) to finish second in heat number 8 and 24th out of 26 swimmers. One swimmer did not start the race and another was disqualified.

Rossi’s time was just outside his Seychelles record of 2:32.60.

In the 50m freestyle, the 16-year-old clocked a personal best time of 24.52 seconds in heat number 4 and was ranked 47th overall out of 68 swimmers.

Russian Vladimir Morozov won the final in 20.61 seconds ‒ four-tenths shy of a world record. It was his second World Cup victory of the day as he also won the 100m freestyle gold medal. Japan’s Shinri Shioura and Australia’s McEvoy tied for the silver medal in 21.32 seconds.

The 2017 Fina (Fédération International de Natation) Swimming World Cup is a series of eight two-day meets in nine different cities between August and November 2017. Races are held in the short-course (25-metre pool) format. Like the previous short course World Cup in 2016, 36 events were scheduled.

The circuit is structured in clusters ‒ Europe, Middle East, and Asia ‒ and distributes a total of prize money reaching US $2 million.

At each World Cup the competition programme includes 22/23 individual events for women and men. For each individual event points are awarded as follows: first place 12 points, second place 9 points, and third place 6 points. Points are also awarded for breaking a world record (20) or equalling a world record (10). Additional scoring is awarded to the top three best performances in the men’s competition and the top three best performances in the women’s event. The top three get 24 points, 18 points and 12 points respectively.

The overall winners will be decided by adding all meet scorings of the swimmers. A sum of US $150,000 will be awarded to the first woman and the first man. Additionally cluster ranking is established by adding the meet scorings. The top six men and women over three World Cups will divide US $150,000, with the winners receiving a cheque of US $50,000.