While Michael Phelps and Katie Ledecky were out asserting their dominance with gold medal performances, a number of elite swimmers set themselves up for similar success with big showings in swimming semifinals on Tuesday night.
2016 Olympic swimming results: Americans place 2 swimmers each in butterfly, breaststroke finals
Team USA will be sending two swimmers each to the men’s 200m breaststroke and women’s 200m women’s butterfly finals Wednesday night.
Women’s 200m butterfly semifinals
The hopes for America’s first gold in this event since Misty Hyman in 2000 will come down to two swimmers who will be starting in the sixth and eighth positions on Wednesday night. Hali Flickinger (2:07.02) and Cammile Adams (2:07.22) each finished more than 1.4 seconds off the lead time, but they’ll have the opportunity to close the gap between them and leader Madeline Groves in the final. Groves was one of two Australians, along with Brianna Throssell, to qualify for the medal round.
The qualifiers:
| Women's 200m Butterfly | |||
| Place | Swimmer | Country | Time |
| 1 | Madeline Groves | AUS | 2:05.66 |
| 2 | Mireia Belmonte | SPN | 2:06.06 |
| 3 | Zhou Yilin | CHN | 2:06.52 |
| 4 | Natsumi Hoshi | JPN | 2:06.74 |
| 5 | Zhang Yufei | CHN | 2:06.95 |
| 6 | Hali Flickinger | USA | 2:07.02 |
| 7 | Brianna Throssell | AUS | 2:07.19 |
| 8 | Cammile Adams | USA | 2:07.22 |
Men’s 200m breaststroke semifinals
Japan’s Ippei Watanabe won a semifinal filled exclusively with Olympic rookies and set an Olympic record in the process, touching the wall in 2:07.22. That was enough to place ahead of 2015 World Champion Marco Koch and silver medalist Kevin Cordes, but Watanabe will have his hands full with the veterans in the finals on Wednesday night. Cordes, the favored American, set a world record pace in the first 150 meters behind his long, loping stroke, but he took his foot off the gas en route to a 2:07.99 finish.
That left him with the fifth-best qualifying time overall and the second-best time for USA Swimming. His teammate Josh Prenot will have a prime spot in lane three in his quest to chase down his first-ever Olympic medal.
The qualifiers:
| Men's 200m Breaststroke | |||
| Place | Swimmer | Country | Time |
| 1 | Ippei Watanabe | JPN | 2:07.22 |
| 2 | Andrew Willis | GBR | 2:07.73 |
| 3 | Josh Prenot | USA | 2:07.78 |
| 4 | Yasuhiro Koseki | JPN | 2:07.91 |
| 5 | Kevin Cordes | USA | 2:07.99 |
| 6 | Anton Chupkov | RUS | 2:08.08 |
| 7 | Marco Koch | GER | 2:08.12 |
| 8 | Dmitriy Balandin | KZH | 2:08.2 |
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