2018 COMMONWEALTH GAMES
- Thursday, April 5th – Tuesday, April 10th (swimming)
- Optus Aquatic Centre, Gold Coast, Australia
- Prelims at 10:30am local (8:30pm previous night EDT)
- Finals at 7:30pm local (5:30am EDT)
- Official Commonwealth Games website
- Entries
- Meet Schedule + Results
- Live Stream (Canada)
- Live Stream (US)
- Live Stream (Australia)
Amid the ruckus surrounding the Australian women’s 4x100m freestyle relay world record and teen Taylor Ruck’s monster 200m freestyle Canadian national mark was the triumphant return of Maddie Groves.
The 22-year-old 200m butterfly Olympic silver medalist has had a rough year, having had to contest a potential suspension from competition due to missing 3 doping tests over a 12-month period, as well as having undergone surgery for endometriosis.
Although Groves competed at the Australian Commonwealth Trials last month, she was still in the ‘getting back in the groove mode’, that is until tonight in the Gold Coast where she hammered home a monster 100m butterfly. After scoring a prelims top seed with her morning effort of 57.77, the only morning swimmer under 58 seconds, the Griffith University athlete powered to a semi-final clocking of 57.22. That’s Groves’ 2nd fastest time ever and lowers the Games Record of 57.40, which was the gold medal-winnig time of Canada’s Katerine Savard back in 2014.
Groves will still need to hold off teammate Emma McKeon, Canada’s Rebecca Smith and others in tomorrow night’s final; but the fact that she is already over a second faster than the 58.45 produced at the Aussie Trials just a month ago is a very good sign the Maddie Groves of old is back.