{"id":7548,"date":"2022-06-20T11:02:50","date_gmt":"2022-06-20T09:02:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kznaquatics.co.za\/?p=7548"},"modified":"2022-06-20T11:02:52","modified_gmt":"2022-06-20T09:02:52","slug":"semi-final-performances-from-van-niekerk-and-sates-at-swimming-world-champs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kznaquatics.co.za\/?p=7548","title":{"rendered":"Semi-final performances from Van Niekerk and Sates at swimming world champs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Sunday, 19 June 2022 \u2013<\/strong> Two of South Africa\u2019s teenage swimmers reached their respective semi-finals at their first World Championships in Budapest on Sunday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lara van Niekerk finished fifth in her 100m breaststroke heat to progress to the evening semi-final after finishing in a time of 1:06.75. The 19-year-old from Pretoria then led in the first 50m of her semi-final but slowed in the second half of the race, swimming exactly the same time as her morning swim to finish in seventh place and did not progress to Monday\u2019s final.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Speaking about competing in her first World Championships semi-final, Van Niekerk said: \u201cIt was actually an amazing experience\u2026 I enjoyed that moment so much, walking out there and experiencing all that. I definitely felt a bit nervous but it was good nerves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI saw at the turn that I was in front so I just tried to keep that gap, but I did die a bit at the end. I\u2019m happy \u2013 we were focusing a bit more on the first 50 than the second,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Van Niekerk\u2019s front-end speed bodes well for the 50m event which will be contested on Friday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m excited about the 50. With all the speed and all the starts that we\u2019ve been practising I think the 50 is going to be the better one \u2013 and we focused more on the 50 for world champs,\u201d added Van Niekerk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Meanwhile, 18-year-old Matt Sates finished seventh in his 200m freestyle heat but his time of 1:47.28 was fast enough to progress to the evening semi-final. There he swam a quicker 1:46.63 to finish joint fifth but missed out on a place in Monday\u2019s final, with 17-year-old Romanian David Popovici swimming a world junior record of 1:44.40 to win the other semi-final and qualify fastest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Earlier in the day Stephanie Houtman finished second in her heat but 21<sup>st<\/sup> overall in the 1500m freestyle in a time of 17:08.12 while Olivia Nel was 25<sup>th<\/sup> overall in the 100m backstroke after finishing eighth in her heat in a time of 1:02.95.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On Saturday Sates finished 11<sup>th<\/sup> overall in the 400m individual medley heats in 4:14.81 and just missed out on making the final, which was won by 20-year-old Frenchman Leon Marchand in a championship record time of 4:04.28.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the artistic swimming (formerly synchronised swimming) on Friday, Olympian Laura Strugnell finished 22<sup>nd<\/sup> in the women\u2019s Solo Technical preliminaries while the combination of Skye&nbsp; Macdonald and Xera Vegter-Maharaj finished 30<sup>th<\/sup> in the Duet Technical preliminaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>ENDS<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sunday, 19 June 2022 \u2013 Two of South Africa\u2019s teenage swimmers reached their respective semi-finals at their first World Championships in Budapest on Sunday. Lara&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":7443,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kznaquatics.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7548"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kznaquatics.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kznaquatics.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kznaquatics.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kznaquatics.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7548"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kznaquatics.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7549,"href":"https:\/\/kznaquatics.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7548\/revisions\/7549"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kznaquatics.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kznaquatics.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kznaquatics.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kznaquatics.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}