MADRID, 15 May 2004 — Pieter van den Hoogenband, turned over in the men’s 100m freestyle on Wednesday, resumed normal service at the European Swimming Championships here yesterday when taking gold in the 200m freestyle.
The Flying Dutchman as the dual Olympic champion is known dominated the race from the word go to post a time of 1min 47.05sec, enjoying over a second advantage at the turn.
Russia’s Andrei Kapralov took second in 1:48.28 with Italians Filippo Magnini and Massimiliano Rosolino dead-heating for third in 1:48.69.
Van den Hoogenband, who blamed lack of peak fitness for his defeat in the 100m, said: “It’s good to win again - it’s never fun to lose, I had trouble getting to sleep on Wednesday night.”
He added: “I’m really tired now. I took a week’s holiday before coming here but from now I’ll start intensive training.”
And with an eye on his main objective the Olympics in Athens he added: “If I want to win 200m gold I’m going to have to beat the world record.”
Ukraine’s Oleg Lisoger captured the 50m breaststroke, clocking 27.55s to come in clear of France’s Hugues Dubosq, who also took second in the 100m breast stroke, and Slovenia’s Matjaz Markic.
The 1500m freestyle went to the young Russian Yuri Prilukov.
The women’s 100m backstroke fell to French teenager Laure Manaudou, who only turns 18 in October. “Everything went well, I’m moved to hear the Marseillaise,” she said after the French National Anthem rang out after she beat her five month older rival Stanislava Komarova from Russia.
At 28 years of age Martina Moravcova is a venerable veteran compared to Manaudou and the Slovakian swam off with the 100m butterfly to add to her trunk full of medals picked up since her debut at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992.
