The women’s 400 IM proved to be another historic event, as Canada’s Tess Cieplucha posted a 4:39.90 to earn Canada’s first gold medal in the event since 1999 despite her second-place seed headed into tonight’s final. Virginia Bardach of Argentina created some outside smoke from lane 6, as she split a near perfect race to drop a 4:41.05 for second. Showing no signs of fatigue from her 200 fly win earlier this week, Bardach managed to dethrone top seed Mary-Sophie Harvey (4:43.20), as she bumped her to third ahead of America’s Alexandra Szekely (4:45.29) and Mariah Denigan (4:48.47).
Despite a massive time drop from this morning (over three seconds), Argentina’s Florencia Perotti failed to climb in the rankings in the loaded heat, surging to a 4:49.25 finish to beat Fernanda De Goeij (4:50.83) of Brazil and Monika Gonzalez (4:53.75) of Mexico.
