Vlad Morozov spent day 2 of the Russian Cup where he’s spent so much time in his career: leading a sprint freestyle field. Meanwhile Vitalina Simonova put up perhaps the performance of the meet so far with a screaming 2:24.66 in the 200 breast.
Simonova’s time was a season-best, and the fastest any Russian has been so far in 2014. She’s now knocking on the door of a top 10 time in the world in the event.
Morozov, for his part, went 22.34 to win the 50 free, topping former Olympic medalist Andrey Grechin‘s 22.47. That’s well off of Morozov’s 21.55 season-best, but is still a solid time for a midseason competition.
Svetlana Chimrova won a tight race in the women’s 50 fly, going 26.82 to win by just over a tenth. Rosalia Nasretdinova was 26.96 for second and third place was just hundredths back at Lyazeva Anastasia‘s 26.98.
The men’s 400 free came down to a similarly tight margin despite being much longer in distance. Yevgeny Kulikov picked up the win, but had to fight for it all the way down to the final wall. His 3:51.18 nipped the 3:51.33 put up by Dmitry Ermakov, his Moscow teammate.
Other individual wins went to Andrey Schabas in the men’s 200 back (1:58.65) and Anastasiya Ivanenko in the women’s 800 free (8:48.60). Friday was the second of four days of competition from Ruza.