Milou van Wijk missed a medal in the 50-meter freestyle at the World Swimming Championships in Singapore on Sunday. The Dutch swimmer finished fifth in the final. Summer McIntosh won her fourth world title in the 400-meter individual medley.
The twenty-year-old Van Wijk achieved a time of 24.47 seconds. In the semi-finals, the swimmer from Zwijndrecht had swum the second-fastest time (24.29).
Meg Harris won the world title in 24.02. The Australian finished ahead of Wu Qingfeng (24.26) and Cheng Yujie (24.28) from China.
In the 100-meter freestyle, Van Wijk also missed a medal on Friday. She was two hundredths of a second short of the bronze and finished fourth. Marrit Steenbergen won the world title in the 100 freestyle. Van Wijk did win bronze with the Dutch relay team in the 4×100 meter freestyle.
In the 4×100 meter medley relay, the Dutch relay swimmers finished eighth and last in the final. Kai van Westering, Caspar Corbeau, Nyls Korstanje, and Sean Niewold achieved a time of 3:32.35. Gold went to Russia in 3:26.93, competing under a neutral flag.
The Dutch women’s team did not start in the 4×100 meter medley relay in the morning. According to the NOS, Maaike de Waard was not fit enough to participate. A spokesperson for the KNZB told NU.nl that the doctor’s advice “had to do with the entire team.” It is not explicitly stated who is suffering from what.
McIntosh won the world title in the 400-meter individual medley. The eighteen-year-old top talent stayed far ahead of the competition, but with 4:25.78, she did not come close to the world record.
With her victory, McIntosh washed away the disappointment of her defeat in the 800-meter individual medley. The Canadian was aiming for five gold medals in Singapore, an equal of Michael Phelps’ performance from 2007. But in the 800 medley, she was beaten by Katie Ledecky.
Earlier, McIntosh won gold in the 400-meter freestyle, the 200-meter butterfly, and the 200-meter individual medley.
In the men’s event, Léon Marchand won his second world title in Singapore in the 400-meter individual medley. The Frenchman was in a class of his own with 4:04.73. He had previously won gold in the 200-meter individual medley. In that event, the four-time Olympic champion from Paris broke Ryan Lochte’s fourteen-year-old world record in the semi-finals.