Katinka's impressive showing continues

Hungary's Katinka Hosszu was in great form at the Hamdan swimming pool on Tuesday.

Katinka Hosszu of Hungary continued with her winning form in the fifth leg of the 2016 Fina/airweave Swimming World Cup at the Hamdan Sports Complex on Tuesday.
 Impressive in the morning and evening sessions, the superstar who won three golds and a silver at the Rio Olympics, literally tore apart the opposition in most of the 15 events she is taking part in the two-day event, except in a couple of races where when a teammates of hers, two Chinese and other European opponents held the limelight for short periods. A medley specialist, Katinka, who uses the World Cup as a self assessment and as a relaxing break from the majors, was into a her powerful stroke making form at the Hamdan swimming pool.
 First in the women's 50m backstroke early rounds, Ukraine's Daryana Zevina was able to edge out Katinka with a time of 26.82 seconds against Katinka's 27.53 second placing ahead of third placed Haihua Cheng of China who clocked 27.96 seconds.
 The 200m backstroke proved to be the same story except for the third place Chinese Haiyun Liu edged out the rest of the field during morning sessions. The Hungarian star was authoritative in the 200m freestyle as Katinka sped past the formidable Chinese Jiaqi Zhang and Yi Fang, in 1 minute and 59.25 seconds.
 The Magyar star will be the oneto beat after her seven gold medals - 200m and 400m freestyle; 50m and 100m backstroke; and 100m, 200m and 400m individual medley at the previous leg in Beijing last weekend. Katinka is the overall winner of the series among women since 2012 and was already the ranking's leader of the 2016 first cluster of the competition.
Among men, the big attractions of the Dubai meet - Russia's Vladimir Morozov and South Africa's Chad Le Clos kept their early event impressions as usual.
 The men's butterfly 50 butterfly sprint witnessed a fast 22.82 seconds by Le Clos eding past Roland Schoeman and Bulgarian ace Pavel Yankovich.- moni@khaleejtimes.com