Gregorio Paltrinieri emerges as a strong contender of Sun Yang in 1500m freestyle – Swimming News
After his meticulous performance at the 2012 European Long Course Championships in Hungary, Gregorio Paltrinieri has now emerged as one of the strongest competitors of Sun Yang in the 1500m freestyle at the forthcoming 2012 London Olympic Games.
The 20-year-old Yang, who stunned the crowd by winning gold medal of the 1500m freestyle in a record-breaking time of 14 minutes and 34.14 seconds, is now preparing hard to compete in his first Olympic Games.
With his meticulous form at the shanghai world titles, yang lowered the ten year old record of great Australian distant freestyle swimmer, Grant Hackett, who posted 14 minutes and 34.56 seconds in July 2001.
Yang also won gold medal of the 800m freestyle while captured a silver medal in the 400m event at the at the same world championships.
On the other hand, Paltrinieri just grabbed gold medal of the 1500m freestyle in a phenomenal time of 14 minutes and 48.92 seconds.
His gold winning effort remained almost five second behind the European mark of 14 minutes and 43.21 seconds, owned by Yury Prilukov of Russia in 2008.
The gold medallist remained almost ten seconds ahead of Gergo Kis of Hungary, who proved his mettle for silver medal of the discipline by reporting a time of 14 minutes and 58.15 seconds.
Third spot of the discipline was secured by Gergely Gyurta of Hungary, who stayed nearly six seconds behind and hit the finishing wall with the timing of 15 minutes and 04.38 seconds.
Paltrinieri’s title-claiming effort was comfortably under the Federation Internationale de Natation Amateur’s (FINA) Olympic time qualification standard for the 1500m event.
“I wanted to go under 15 minutes but I am really surprised by my time. My strategy was to swim out in front because I wanted to qualify for the Olympics and that is what I have done,” said Paltrinieri.
The Italian was extremely contented with his phenomenal effort in the distant freestyle event and articulated that he will train hard to make a significant improvement in his timing and impress his fans by increasing his chances of securing the podium at
upcoming Games.
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