Jessicah Schipper will make a world record attempt over 200m butterfly at the Pan Pacific Championships in Canada this summer.
On the eve of the Brisbane Grand Prix in Australia, Schipper’s coach Ken Wood told the Australian Associated Press: “We are going to have a lash at the world record at Pan Pacs in the 200m `fly. You’ve got to have a goal and I don’t mind telling anyone.”
This weekend Schipper will race for the first time since sustaining a shoulder injury in warm-up at the world short-course championships in Shanghai. She was accidentally kicked by another swimmer just before the final of the 100 metres butterfly but still managed to pick up the bronze.
“Champions like that do not like being beaten, regardless of the circumstances,” Wood said. “But it doesn’t hurt them to get beaten occasionally. It brings them down to earth. Now she wants that world record at the Pan Pacs.”
Schipper’s Commonwealth record stands at 2min 05.65sec, 0.04sec behind the world record held by Poland’s Otylia Jedrzejczak, who beat the Australian for the world title in Montreal in 2005 several weeks before sustaining a severe back and neck injury in a car crash in which her brother died. Now on the road to recovery, the Pole clocked a time just above the minute mark on 100 metres this week.
Meanwhile, Grant Hackett, Olympic champion and world record holder over 1,500m freestyle, makes his competitive comeback in Brisane six months after undergoing surgery to a shoulder.
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