Wednesday was the rather muted opening day at the 2015 Julio de Lemare Trophy in Vitoria, Brazil. The country’s summer junior championships for 17 and 18 year olds is a final tuneup for the upcoming Open Championships that will begin the country’s Olympic qualifying cycle.
A single Championship Record was broken on the day when Natalia de Luccas won the Junior2 (18 year olds’) 200 backstroke in 2:14.24.
Even with that swim, however, de Luccas showed that her focus is still down-the-road. The former South American Record holder has been 2:12.0, and between her and Joanna Mranhao (who now holds the national and continental records by .04 seconds), that mark will be on continual notice through the Olympic Games.
The other noteworthy swim on the day came in the session-closing 400 free relay. There, Pinheiros’ Pedro Henrique Silva Spajari split a 48.78 on the third leg of the relay. That adds one more name into the proverbial Olympic hat in an increasingly-crowded men’s Olympic sprint field: that split was within two-tenths of a second of Brazil’s third and fourth legs at last summer’s World Championships, where the country qualified 2nd to finals and wound up 4th.
Actually, he’s already done 48 in Singapure. At semis, he broke the meet record with a 48”8, so he was already at the possible relay contents list.