Aug. 7, 2016
Marcelo Chierighini led off the finals of the men's 4x100m freestyle relay in 48.12 seconds, third-fastest in the field, as his native Brazil took fifth in the event at the Rio Olympics on Sunday night.
Chierighini, who swam the prelims of the 4x100 free relay in 2012 in London, led off Brazil's prelim relay team with a heat-best 48.47 leadoff swim. His time trailed just Katsumi Nakamura of Japan's 47.99 for fastest leadoff split in the morning. Brazil would go on to tie with Canada for fifth coming out of the prelims with a total time of 3:14.06. Russia had the top prelims time at 3:12.04 followed by the United States (3:12.38) and Australia (3:12.65).
In the finals, Brazil clocked a 3:13.21, just under two seconds off the podium. The United States won gold in 3:09.92, France took silver (3:10.53) and Australia bronze (3:11.37).
Kirsty Coventry, swimming the 100m backstroke semifinals, touched in 1:00.26 to finish sixth in her heat and 11th overall.
Coventry had advanced to the semifinals after posting a 1:00.13 during the morning prelims, which was fourth in her heat and 11th overall. It marked the fifth time in five tries that she advanced into the semis and the second-best Olympic prelims time of her career, trailing only her 59.00 when she was the top seed coming out of prelims in 2008.
Also swimming in the men's 4x100 free relay was Peter Holoda, who will be a junior on this year's Auburn team. The Hungarian swam the anchor leg for his home country, clocking a 48.91 final split in prelims. Hungary finished in 3:15.21, which was 12th-place, 1.04 seconds behind eighth-place Japan (3:14.17).
Chierighini returns to the pool on Tuesday for the prelims and semifinals of the men's 100m freestyle. He will swim in heat six, lane six during prelims and will be joined by current Auburn swimmer and Israeli Ziv Kalontarov, who will swim in heat three, lane 6.