2018 PAN PACIFIC CHAMPIONSHIPS

The American quartet of Caeleb Dressel, Blake Pieroni, Zach Apple and Nathan Adrian had combined to win gold in the men’s 400 free relay in a new meet record of 3:11.67 at the Pan Pacific Championships in Tokyo, but shortly after the relay they were disqualified for swimming out of order.

Sources tell SwimSwam that the swimmers were told the wrong order by the coaches.

Preliminary report: USA men DQ’d due to wrong order. #2018PanPacs — Rowdy Gaines (@RowdyGaines) August 11, 2018

The CBDA account on Twitter also announced the news of the Brazilians being bumped up to gold, and the results are now official. It looks as though Apple swam second and Pieroni third when they were supposed to go the other way around. Prior to the DQ, they had broken the 2010 meet record held by the U.S. at 3:11.74.

Brazil gets bumped up to gold with their swim of 3:12.02, led by a scintillating anchor leg from Pedro Spajari (46.94) that was the fastest in the final (even including the American splits). Adrian had narrowly held off the Brazilian with a 47.27 anchor leg of his own.

Prior to being disqualified, the American splits were:

Dressel – 48.76

Apple – 47.92

Pieroni – 47.72

Adrian – 47.27

The Australians move up from bronze to silver in 3:12.53, and thought to be .01 off of a medal, the Japanese men get bumped to bronze after setting a new Asian Record in 3:12.54.

This same situation happened fairly recently at the 2016 Short Course World Championships in Windsor, where the Canadian women swam the wrong order in the 400 free relay final and were disqualified after initially winning the silver medal.