{"id":186723,"date":"2014-12-05T04:00:22","date_gmt":"2014-12-04T18:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=186723"},"modified":"2014-12-05T04:00:22","modified_gmt":"2014-12-04T18:00:22","slug":"villacrusis-beats-qfying-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/villacrusis-beats-qfying-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Villacrusis beats q\u2019fying time"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Christian<\/a>
Christian Villacrusis, seen here competing in the 100m breaststroke swim in last month\u2019s All Schools Meet, joined the same event in the 12th FINA World Swimming Championships (25M) last Wednesday night at the Hamad Aquatic Centre in Doha, Qatar. (Roselyn B. Monroyo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nChristian Villacrusis gave the CNMI a good start in the 12th FINA World Swimming Championships (25M) after surpassing his qualifying time in the 100m breaststroke race last Wednesday at the Hamad Aquatic Centre in Doha, Qatar.<\/p>\n

Villacrusis completed the four-lap swim in 1:18.93, beating his qualifying time (1:22.35) listed on the event\u2019s start list. The 14-year-old swimmer placed fourth on Heat 1, joining eight other participants in one of the qualifying races in the event. He was the youngest swimmer in his heat, sharing the distinction with Guam\u2019s Tanner Poppe.<\/p>\n

Villacrusis finished ahead of Poppe, who timed in at 1:24.49, and two other swimmers\u2014Seychells\u2019 Payet Justin (1:19.97) and Benin\u2019s Awoussou Hodadje Ablam (1:26.91)\u2014in his heat. Botswana\u2019s Kitso Matija won the heat with his 1:08.65, followed by the Federate State of Micronesia\u2019s Dionisio Augustine (1:13.11), Uganda\u2019s Elisha Tibatemwa (1:13.22), VIllacrusis, Payet, Poppe, and Ablam.<\/p>\n

Great Britain\u2019s Adam Peaty posted the fastest qualifying time in the 100m breaststroke event after submitting 57.02 seconds, but failed to eclipse the world (55.61 seconds) and championship (56.80 seconds) records Cameron Van Der Burgh of South Africa holds. Adam later broke the championship record as he timed in at 56.43 seconds in the semifinals to lead seven other finalists. Van Der Burgh also made it to the finals with his 57.18 seconds and will be joined by Russia\u2019s Kirill Prigoda (56.93 seconds), Japan\u2019s Yasuhiro Koseki (57.06), Slovenia\u2019s Damir Dugonjic (57.09), Brazil\u2019s Felipe Franca Silva (57.21), France\u2019s Giacomo Perez-Dortona (57.24), and the U.S.\u2019 Cody Miller (57.28).<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the two other CNMI participants\u2014Victoria Chentsova and Takumi Sugie\u2014in the five-day competition had their first events yesterday.<\/p>\n

Chentsova, who was the Commonwealth\u2019s flag bearer during the opening ceremony of the event last Wednesday night, was scheduled to join the qualifying race in the 800 freestyle qualifying swim at 12:48pm (7:48pm Saipan time) yesterday. She was on Heat 1 and listed her qualifying time at 10:11.26. <\/p>\n

Chentsova was set to race against Myanmar\u2019s Khant Khant Su San (9:51.10), Moldova\u2019s Ana Semkruncic (9:38.56), Faroe Islands\u2019 Cecilia Eysturdal (9:05.08), Barbados\u2019 Lani Cabrera (9:01.10), El Salvador\u2019s Rebeca Quinteros (8:59.36), Peru\u2019s Erika Naranjo Garcia (9:01.08), Turkey\u2019s Tuana Ayca Bahtoglu (9:01.33), India\u2019s Malavika Vishwanath (9:24.45), and Vietnam\u2019s Anh Vien Thi Nguyen (9:45.00).<\/p>\n

Sugie had an earlier race than Chentsova with his qualifying swim in the 50m freestyle slated yesterday at 10:59am (5:59pm Saipan). Sugie swam on Heat 2 and had a qualifying time of 27.88 seconds. He held the second fastest qualifying time with the best mark belonging to Palau\u2019s Shawn Wallace Dingilius (27.58 seconds).<\/p>\n

Joining Sugie and Dingilius on Heat 2 were Congo\u2019s Jynior Ndinga (29.24 seconds), Ethiopia\u2019s Robel Kiros Habte (29.08), Tonga\u2019s Tongli Panuve (28.46), Burundi\u2019s Idriss Mutankabandi (28:00), Nepal\u2019s Miraj Prajapati (28.19), Central African Republic\u2019s Shad Perriere (28.59), and Yemen\u2019s Sami Al-Sayaghi (29.10) and Yousef Al-Behmi (29.30).<\/p>\n

After the 50m freestyle event, Sugie along with Villacrusis will conclude their campaign in Doha this Saturday when they compete in the 100m freestyle race. Chentsova, on the other hand, will have her second and last event\u2014400m freestyle\u2014today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christian Villacrusis gave the CNMI a good start in the 12th FINA World Swimming Championships…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":186726,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[46,26,789,800],"class_list":["post-186723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-ceremony","tag-cnmi","tag-qatar","tag-south-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186723\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}