Swimming: Stunning Bell wins 100m backstroke

Daniel Bell. Photo / Richard Robinson

New Zealand swimmer Daniel Bell scored a stunning 100m backstroke win at the Santa Clara Invitational meet in California yesterday.

The 21-year-old clocked 54.70 seconds to beat six-time Olympic medallist Ryan Lochte and top qualifier Eugene Godsoe in the meet that attracted many of the world's best.

The New Zealander is training at the University of California Berkeley under NCAA-winning coach Dave Durden, a former collegiate teammate of Bell's coach, Scott Talbot, who has a number of his swimmers training and racing in California as build-up for next month's world championships.

Bell's time is only .8s outside the national record he set in claiming a silver medal at the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi.

"He is still in full work five weeks out from the world championships in Shanghai, meaning the time and especially the result are particularly pleasing," Talbot said.

Bell's performance was a highlight in a strong day for the New Zealanders.

North Shore's Melissa Ingram, fourth in her favoured 200m backstroke 24 hours earlier, won the B final of the 100m backstroke yesterday.

She was 10th fastest in preliminaries but clocked 1m 2.22s to win the B final in a time that would have placed her seventh in the A final.

Jessie Blundell (1m 4.49s) was ninth in the B final and Emily Thomas (1m 3.68s), returning from knee surgery, won the C final.

Shaun Burnett was second in the B final of the 200m butterfly in 2m 2.11s and Kurt Bassett won the C final of the 100m backstroke in 56.59s.

Meanwhile, 14-time Olympic gold medallist and world record-holder Michael Phelps lost for the third straight time in one of his signature events, finishing one-hundredth of a second behind Australia's Nick D'Arcy in the 200m butterfly yesterday. He was chased down in the final 25m by D'Arcy, who touched in 1m 55.39s.

Phelps had not lost the 200m butterfly in almost nine years; the other two losses were to China's Wu Peng.

- NZPA