According to reports from Rio de Janeiro, Coventry dominated in the women’s 200m backstroke final with a meet record time of 2:08.41.

Coventry now sits sixth in the world with that swim.
Fabiola Molina took second place with a 2:14.52, while Duane Marce was placed third in 2:16.04.

Coventry’s outstanding performance in the women’s 200m backstroke final was the highlight of the day on a Tuesday night which saw the first finals session kicking off with the fastest 50m freestyle in the world and a meet record at the Maria Lenk Trophy.

The meet is taking place in long course metres format.
Brazilian Cesar Cielo helped the Club de Regatas Flamengo win the men’s 200m freestyle relay with a scorching 21.73 leadoff leg.

The time puts Cielo at the top of the world rankings, ahead of Fred Bousquet’s 21.82 from March.
Along with Alain Bernard’s 21.98, three men have cracked the 22-second barrier in 2011.

The relay team, which also included Ramom Melo, Henrique Rodrigues and Nicholas Dos Santos won the event in 1:28.33.
Ous Mellouli set a meet record in the men’s 1 500m freestyle with a winning time of 15:08.22.
He’s been faster this year with a fourth-ranked time of 15:01.65.

Luiz Arapiraca touched second in 15:12.69, while Lucas Kanieski wound up third in 15:21.05.
Rebecca Soni cruised to victory in the women’s 200m breaststroke with a top time of 2:26.83.
Her best time this year far surpasses her swim today as she owns the top-ranked time in the world with a 2:23.27 from February.

Thamy Ventorin took second in 2:35.58, while Michele Schmidt placed third in 2:37.31.
Thiago Pereira won the men’s 200m breaststroke in 2:10.79, moving to seventh in the world rankings.

Tales Cerdeira finished second in 2:11.86, while Henrique Barbosa picked up third in 2:12.18.
Pereira would return to win the 200 backstroke with a time of 1:58.25, which puts him 10th in the world.
Second place went to Leonardo de Deus with a 1:59.75 and third went to Leonardo Fim with a 1:59.99.

Mireia Belmonte claimed the women’s 800 freestyle crown in 8:40.77.
Her fastest time this year is a ninth-ranked effort of 8:27.88 from last month.
Poliana Okimoto earned second in 8:41.99, while Ana Marcela Da Cunha grabbed third in 8:48.55.

Jessica Hardy led the way into semis in the women’s 50m freestyle with a 25.71, while Bruno Fratus hit the wall in 22.08 in the men’s 50m freestyle preliminaries to rank sixth in the world.
Cesar Cielo qualified second into semis with a 22.25.
Flavia Delaroli-Cazziolato, Michelle Lenhardt, Carolina Bergamaschi and Tatiana Barbosa claimed the women’s 200m freestyle relay in 1:41.84.

The Maria Lenk Trophy is an annual event which is held in honour of one of Brazil’s greatest female swimmers – Maria Emma Hulga Lenk – who died on April 16, 2007 at the age of 92.
Born on January 15, 1915, Lenk as a Brazilian swimmer and to date is, in fact, considered one of the greatest Brazilian female athletes.

At the age of 17, she was the first Brazilian and South-American woman to participate in the Summer Olympic Games, at the 1932 Summer Olympics, in Los Angeles.

Born in São Paulo, Lenk was the first Brazilian in history to set a world record in swimming.
On November 8, 1939, in Rio de Janeiro with a time of 2:56.0, she beat Jopie Waalberg’s previous record of 2:56.9, for the 200m breaststroke event.

This record lasted almost five years, until Nel van Vliet, from the Netherlands broke it on August 17, 1946, with a time of 2:52.6.

In the same year, she also broke the world record for the discontinued category of 400m breaststroke, with a time of 6:15.8.
She also participated in the 1936 Summer Olympics, in Berlin, Germany, where she reached the semi-finals of the 200m breaststroke event.

In this occasion, she also became the first woman in the world to swim the butterfly stroke in an official competition.
At the time, the butterfly stroke was used as a form of swimming the breaststroke, and not yet recognised as a separate swimming stroke.

Lenk’s account of the event was that at the time she subscribed to a German specialised magazine that ran a story on David Armbruster’s and Jack Sieg’s work in developing “a new way of swimming the breaststroke”.

She became interested and started practicing the stroke by herself in her training sections.
In 1936, she and Jack Sieg were the only two people that were prepared to use the technique in the breaststroke events at the Summer Olympics.

Lenk’s goal of winning an Olympic medal was cut short when World War II caused the cancellation of the Games of 1940 and 1944, which would have corresponded to her peak in competitive swimming.

She retired in 1942, but never stopped swimming, focusing on Masters events.
On April 16, 2007, she was training in the Clube de Regatas do Flamengo’s swimming pool when her blood pressure dropped and she suffered a sudden respiratory arrest. She was taken to Copa D’Or Hospital, in Copacabana, but medical personnel couldn’t revive her and she died of cardiac arrest, aged 92.
Before her death, Lenk still swam 1½ kilometres every day, even in her 90s.

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