Melissa Ingram should move to fourth place overall after another strong performance at the swimming Fina World Cup in Singapore today.
Ingram took out the women's 400m freestyle at the short course World Cup to back up her win in the 200m backstroke and a second placing in
the 200m freestyle yesterday.
She was one of five New Zealand medallists today in Singapore including Wellington's Matt Woodrow, Taranaki's Charlotte Webby, Southland's Natalie Wiegersma and Rotorua's Kane Radford.
Woodrow finished an outstanding second to Olympic gold medallist Oussama Mellouli (Tunisia) in the 1500m freestyle with Radford third, Webby won bronze in the 200m butterfly and Wiegersma continued her medal winning efforts with a bronze in the 400m individual medley.
Ingram faced a more aggressive start from the field that included Beijing gold medallist Bronte Barratt and in-form South African Melissa Corfe. She was third at the 100m mark but moved to the front at the midway mark before clearing out with two 30 second laps to win in 4min 04.55sec from Barrett and Corfe.
It was slightly slower than her New Zealand record set in Sydney but impressive in its execution, earning her 944 FINA points. This is expected to elevate her to fourth place in the overall in the World Cup standings, with $170,000 up for grabs for all swimmers at each Wold Cup short course meet and a further $600,000 to be distributed among the top three male and female swimmers at the end of the seven-meet series.
Ingram will head to Europe later this week where she will prepare for the three remaining rounds of the World Cup in Moscow, Stockholm and Berlin.
Woodrow turned in another stunning performance to finish second in 15min 07.81sec in the 1500m freestyle after taking the fight to the Olympic champion Mellouli. Radford was third with 15min 23.99sec.
Natalie Wiegersma, 20, improved one place from Sydney to get on to the podium in the 400m individual medley in 4min 43.44sec won by South Africa's Katheryn Meaklim.
Webby (Bell Block) held on strongly for third in the 200m butterfly in 2min 13.3sec.
- NZPA
