Alicia Coutts defeats Stephanie Rice in the preliminary rounds of the 200m IM – Swimming News
The 2010 Commonwealth Games champion, Alicia Coutts, has defeated the 2008 Beijing’ golden girl, Stephanie Rice, in the preliminary rounds of the 200m Individual Medley at the 2011 Australian Swimming Championship in Sydney.
Coutts won the hearts of the crowd and stunned the Australian coaches, as she defeated the 2008 Olympics triple gold medallist, Rice. First, Coutts won the preliminary rounds of the 100m butterfly and then the 200m IM, where she feared to defend her title
of the championship.
Coutts was one of the best performers at the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games, where she conquered three individual gold medals and the two relay gold medals. Whereas, Rice won the gold medal for the 200m IM, 400m IM and 4*100m medley relay at the 2008 Beijing
Olympics.
In the 100m butterfly, Coutts touched the wall in a superb time of 58.83 seconds to qualify as the fastest swimmer ahead of Yolane Kukla and Alice Mills, who touched the wall for the second and third spots in a time of 59.15 and 59.80 seconds, respectively.
Jessicah Schipper, Emily Seebohm, Mariek Guehrer, Grace Loh and Stephanie Rice also rushed their ways to the semi-finals.
Coutts, after conquering the 100m event was extremely happy and said that the credit of her win goes to her coach, Michael Bohl, who was working very hard on her start, turns and stroke. She said that she has gained much confidence with her victory and aims
to provide more in the semi-final and final event.
Coutts said, “I haven't raced since Comm Games, so it's kind of 'how am I going to go. To get out there and just swim this morning and to not die at the end was a good feeling.”
After a while, Coutts went to participate in the Women’s 200m IM heats, where she again touched the wall in a time of 2:15.38 minutes to out-touch the Olympic champion, Rice, who touched the wall in 2:18.42 minutes to qualify for the semi-finals.
Rice said, “I think the most important thing is not using up emotional energy or physical energy unless you really have to and I really just wanted to do enough to get me through to the semi-finals tonight then we sort of start racing.”
The 22-year-old Rice is competing in her first major event after her shoulder surgery in 2010, which forced Rice to drop her spot in the Australian team for the Commonwealth Games. Now, Rice needs to regain her titles of the 200m IM and 400m IM or conquer
the 100m butterfly event to book her spot in the Australian Swimming Team, which will participate at the 2011 Shanghai World Championships, this July.
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