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FINA Arena Swimming World Cup

Tao Li celebrating her win in Singapore earlier in the series. (Photo courtesy of Fulford PR)

Stockholm, November 12 , 2008 – Singapore's golden girl, swimmer Tao Li, has scooped up another gold medal on Day 2 of the Stockholm leg of the 2008 FINA Swimming World Cup series.

Against a tough European field bolstered by strong Scandinavian competitors, Tao Li put in a reasonable morning swim of 59.32 seconds in the 100m Butterfly to make up the top four going into the final. Then later that evening the plucky swimmer stormed home in a smart 56.87sec to claim gold over Denmark's Jeanette Ottesen (57.46sec) and Sweden's Petra Granlund.

Australian swimmer Marieke Guehrer, who was neck and neck with Tao Li in the 100m Butterfly heats earlier, withdrew from the event to focus on the 50m freestyle.

Day two of competition saw Tao Li pitted against a tough line up of seasoned competitors in the 50m Butterfly – Therese Alshammar and Sarah Sjostrom of Sweden, Guehrer of Australia, and Jeanette Ottensen of Denmark.

The preliminaries saw some fast entry times clocked up, with the top competitors all within 0.60 of a second of each other. After putting in a respectable 26.83sec, Tao Li then had to swim-off with France's Melanie Henique for the 8th place. She narrowly edged out the French swimmer (26.58sec) by 0.07 of a sec for a berth in the 50m Butterfly final with 26.42sec.

Predictably, the World Shortcourse Record for the Women's 50m Butterfly fell on Day 2 of competition. The group of swimmers contesting both the 100m and 50m Butterfly events through the Singapore, Moscow and Stockholm legs of the Series has been racing towards faster times with each meeting.

The world record, established by Australia's Felicity Galvez (25.32sec) at the World Short Course Championships in April of this year, was clipped 0.01sec by Sweden's Therese Alshammar (25.31secs) before an enthusiastic home crowd.

Giving it her trademark all despite the fatigue from the morning's swim-off, Tao Li lowered her final time by another 0.32sec to touch the wall in 5th place with 26.10sec, a good effort considering she is just four weeks into training after a long lay-off from her Beijing Olympics exertions.

The swimming world is now looking forward to the Berlin leg of the Series on the 15th and 16th of November.