Bronte's record gone in minutes
One half of Australian swimming’s sister act held the Commonwealth Games 50m freestyle record for a blink of an eye this morning.
Bronte Campbell believes some shut eye this afternoon will help her take it back in tonight’s Glasgow 2014 semi-final.
Little more than 12 hours after partnering her sibling, Cate Campbell, in Australia’s wold record 4 x 100m performance, Bronte Campbell clocked 24.33sec to erase Libby Lenton’s mark of 24.61s posted at the Melbourne Games in 2006.
But in the next heat England’s Francesca Halsall forced a rapid re-write of the history books by going 0.02s faster to be the No.1 qualifier.
Cate Campbell was third with 24.52s. Another green and gold cap, Mel Schlanger, was fifth fastest on 24.87s However, the Campbells produced their impressive swims on very little sleep following the excitement of their international swimming headline effort at the Tollcross Aquatic Centre.
And both have bounced back from a virus that has swept through the Australian camp since its pre-Games camp in Manchester.
“I was pretty pleased to get the record for a minute to be perfectly honest, I had about three hours sleep last night,” Campbell said.
“It just wanted to get up this morning, have a nice heat, get through to the semi-final. I guess I had the (Games) record for four minutes which was four minutes more than what I was expecting.
“To get a personal best in the heats after last night was icing on the cake. The relay last night is still carrying me through.
“I was just buzzing in bed, not really thinking about swimming. It is when your mind goes into overdrive thinking how you can save the world, solving the world problems. I’ll just go home and have a good nap before tonight.”
Bronte Campbell’s greatest concern overnight was to not wake her sister, who shares their room at the athletes’ village.
However, the siblings were split earlier in the week when Bronte Campbell went into quarantine after contracting a virus.
She was confident the illness wasn’t affecting her performance in the pool.
“I did havea sickness a few days ago, there has been a sickness going around the entire team,” Campbell said.
“I don’t want to harp on a about it. I haven’t been the only one being sick, just the only one you know about. It is something I’m over now. It no longer matters. It didn’t take much out of me. I was stuck in isolation and that seems to have worked because no-one else got sick.”
Cate Campbell confirmed she had been ill while in Manchester but wasn’t affected as greatly as her sister.
For Cate Campbell, this morning’s swim was about getting back in the water after the euphoria from the previous night and ensuring a good lane for her semi-final.
“I knew there would a few quick times this morning and Bronte and Fran proved that,” she said.
“I just wanted to go through the motions and get through to the next round.”
