Tatjana at the forefront as three more women qualify for world champs

Tatjana Schoenmaker led three more women to world championship qualifying times on the second day of the national swimming trials in Durban on Tuesday.

Commonwealth Games heroine Schoenmaker and her Tuks teammate Kaylene Corbett went one and two in the 200m breaststroke‚ clocking 2min 24.44sec and 2:25.62 respectively‚ both inside the 2:25.91 required to make the team for the international showpiece in Gwangju‚ South Korea‚ in July.

Their stablemate‚ Nathania van Niekerk‚ added her name to the roster while winning the women’s 200m backstroke in 2:11.37.

So far four women have qualified for the world championships‚ with Erin Gallagher having done it in the 100m freestyle on the opening day.

Gallagher broke Lize-Marie Retief’s 11-year-old 50m butterfly SA record on Tuesday‚ touching in 26.30 to shave 0.06sec off the old mark.

Among the men‚ US-based student Christopher Reid qualified in emphatic style as he went 1:57.11 in the 200m backstroke. So far‚ Chad Le Clos (200m butterfly) is the only other man to have qualified.

Schoenmaker and Reid’s times were also inside the Olympic qualifying marks they will need to get to the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games next year.

While Corbett missed it in the evening final‚ she beat the Games criterion in the morning heats.

It’s been quite a while — possibly since the days of Penny Heyns — that women have outnumbered men 2-1 on a qualification list during a national championships.

The gala ends on Friday.