Missy eyes gold rush
Missy Franklin cruised through the water on Tuesday morning, trying to use as little energy as possible with a tough double looming.
Franklin posted the fifth-fastest time in the 200-metre freestyle at 1 minute, 56.90 seconds. Camille Muffat of France, a silver medalist in this event at last year’s London Olympics, was top qualifier at 1:56.53.
Olympic champion Allison Schmitt shockingly failed to qualify for the team that came to Barcelona, leaving Franklin as the top American hope. She was fourth in London, missing a medal by a hundredth of a second.
Now, she’s competing in eight events at the worlds, hoping to join Michael Phelps as the only swimmers to claim eight golds in a major international meet.
“When you have to swim each race three times, you really have to be smart about how you swim them,” Franklin said. “So I knew the goal for today was to make it back for semifinals.”
It was a good morning for the American team after being shut out of gold the previous night.
Tyler Clary led the field in the 200 butterfly, edging Olympic champion Chad le Clos of South Africa. Connor Jaeger posted the fastest time in prelims of the grueling 800 freestyle, just ahead of Sun Yang of China.
Franklin already has a gold in the 4x100 free relay and is a big favorite to make it two-for-two in the 100 backstroke during the evening finals. Then, with only a short break, she’ll return to the pool for the semifinals of the 200 free.
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