BCN2013 - Swimming

With a roll of honour consisting in 11 victories out if the 14 FINA World Championships contested, the USA were ready to get a 12th crown in Barcelona. All was going apparently well, and the North American quartet touched first in 3:30.06, but a less than a minute later, the verdict was displayed on the scoreboard: dsq, disqualified. The mistake happened in the breaststroke leg, when Kevin Cordes left the blocks -0.04 before the arrival of Matt Grevers. The tolerance being until -0.03, the US team lost the race by the tiniest possible precipitation margin: 0.01!

Already in 2007, the name of USA is missing from the list of medallists in this event: in Melbourne, the mistake had happened in the preliminaries, when Ian Crocker, leaving for the butterfly leg also departed too early: -0.04!

The title in Barcelona came to France (Lacourt, Perez-Dortona, Stravius and Gilot), in a time of 3:31.51. The French team is now the first European quartet to have won this event, after the 11 titles of USA and the three crowns of Australia (1998, 2001 and 2007). Australia (3:31.64, silver) and Japan (3:32.26, bronze) completed the podium. 

World Record: United States, 3:27.28 – August 2, 2009 in Rome (ITA)
Championships Record: United States, 3:27.28 – August 2, 2009 in Rome (ITA)
2003-2011 winners in this event: 2003 – United States (3:31.54); 2005 – United States (3:31.85); 2007 – Australia (3:34.93); 2009 – United States (3:27.28); 2011 – United States (3:32.06)
The best in this event (1. most victories or 2. fastest time): United States (1973, 1975, 1978, 1982, 1986, 1991, 1994, 2003, 2005, 2009 & 2011)
2012 Olympic podium: 1. United States (3:29.35), 2. Japan (3:31.26), 3. Australia (3:31.58)

QUOTES:

Gold medal team: France

Fabien Gilot: "It's an amazing week for us, we are building our team year after year, Australia and USA are the biggest nations in the sport, to be disqualified in a final is really hard and I'm sure we'll see them again in two years."

Silver medal team: Australia

Tommaso D'Orsogna: "It was a fantastic meet for Australia, the team is very young, our swimmers are developing and coming along, the main thing we can take away from this competition is that we look forward to the future."

Bronze medal team: Japan

Fujii Takuro: "We did our best effort in this race so we are happy. This is my first World Championships, now we have many young swimmers in our team and the older ones are teaching and training them to reach their best level."