adminCoventry won four events – the women’s 200m individual medley and the 50m, 100m and 200m backstroke – during the two-day meet in which she also came second in the 100m freestyle.
The 28-year-old two-time Olympic Games champion also swam the only Olympic A-time of the meet when she won the 200IM on Saturday in a time of 2:12.65.
This was good enough to earn her the Best Female of the Meet award at the end of the two-day competition on Sunday night, according to reports from Durban.
After competing in three events on Saturday night, Coventry took part in two more races on Sunday night – the 100m freestyle and 100m backstroke.
In the 100m freestyle race, Coventry settled for second place behind South Africa’s Karin Prinsloo.
Prinsloo, one of South Africa’s bright prospects for this year’s London Olympic Games in July, won the 100m freestyle in a time of 56.08 seconds, again short of the 54.57 qualifying time to edge out Coventry (56.60) for first position.
Coventry was the highest placed foreigner in the field.
In fact, the womens 100m freestyle proved to be an outstanding race of the day on Sunday night where Prinsloo led from the start to stay ahead of a hard chasing Coventry.
Prinsloo touched in 56.08 to Coventry’s 56.60 while the chasing group was led home by Trudi Maree in 57.04.
Coventry took to the water a little later in the women’s 100m backstroke where she chased the Olympic qualifying time of 1:00.82.
The two-time Olympic Games 200m backstroke champion ended well ahead of Prinsloo this time in 1:00.89 – just a fraction off the mark.
Prinsloo stopped the pads in 1:02.04 with Jessica Ashley-Cooper next on 1:02.71.
“I really wanted to do the qualifying time here, ” Coventry told reporters after the race, “but I ended doing the same time as the All-Africa Games last year.”
Coventry has already qualified for the London Games where she is expected to defend her 200m backstroke title, which she first won at the 2004 Games in Athens, Greece.
She then successfully defended her title at the last Olympic Games in Beijing, China, in 2008 and will be out to score a hat-trick of victories in this event at the London Games which are scheduled to run from July 27 to August 12.
Meanwhile, South Africa’s Herman Heerden claimed the only Olympic A-qualifying time in the evening session on the second and final day of the two-day international swimming invitational in Durban on Sunday.
The 21-year-old clocked 15 minutes, 06.11 seconds in the 1 500m freestyle final to complete the first part of the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc) policy that requires swimmers to record an A-standard time twice during a 10-month period.
The South African Press Association reported yesterday that Heerden now needs to swim inside the 15:11.83 qualifying time again at the national trials in April as per the Sascoc requirement, to seal his place in London.
The Stellenbosch swimmer finished ahead of Myles Brown (15:18.43) and Troy Prinsloo (15:49.43).
“It’s a massive mountain that has just fallen off my shoulders,” Heerden, who won Best Male Performer of the Meet, said afterwards.
“The first one is now done and I just need to now focus doing it again at nationals. I’m confident that I will do it again in two months time.”
Online Reporter