With career-best time, Kennedy wins 50 free in Arena Pro Series for 2nd time

Madison Kennedy won the 50 meters at the Arena Pro Series Friday with the sixth fastest time in the world.

The wind may have helped a bit but that didn’t bother Avon’s Madison Kennedy at all. Kennedy won her second straight 50 meter freestyle in the Arena Pro Series Friday night in Mesa, Arizona, with a career-low time of 24.45 seconds.

In March, Kennedy won her first-ever Arena Pro Series event in Orlando in 24.71 seconds – a career-low performance for her at that time.

Friday in Mesa, swimmers battled wind gusts of up to 25 mph in the open air pool. For the 50 meter freestyle swimmers, the wind was at their back for the entire race. The top three swimmers in the race – Kennedy, Dana Vollmer and Abbey Weitzeil each swam career low times.

Kennedy’s time of 24.45 seconds is the sixth fastest time in the world this year and the third fastest time ever by an American swimmer in the 50 free. Twice on Friday, Vollmer swam career-best times. She was second in the final with a time of 24.69 seconds with Weitziel tying her career-best time of 24.72 that she swam earlier this year.

“It’s probably the reason I dropped all that time because of the wind,” Kennedy said with a grin afterward. “I just put up my fin.”

Kennedy said she has been working on her tempo in the race. “I’ve been working on my (race) tempo a lot,” she said. “I have a notoriously slow tempo which is good in the longer events but since I’m not swimming in longer events. … This was fun but it’s cold.”

Kennedy didn’t expect such a significant drop in time, 0.26 of a second. “You never expect to swim like that, I don’t think,” she said. “In a 50, that’s something I’ve been working towards for years. You work years (to drop) hundredths (of a second). Weeks for hundredths. Months for hundredths. I’m always going to say it was the wind, but I still got it (the win).”

Kennedy also picked up the American textile record in the 50 meters, breaking the record set by Dana Torres of 24.53 seconds in 2007. Torres still holds the two fastest times by an American woman in the 50 freestyle, swimming 24.07 in Beijing and 24.25 in 2008 in Omaha.

The Arena Pro Swim Series at Mesa is the fourth of seven stops of the 2015-16 Arena Pro Swim Series. Swimmers may earn awards for top-three finishes in all individual Olympic events across the series. At each meet, $1,000 will be provided for a first-place finish, $600 for second and $200 for third.

The meet concludes Saturday.

UPDATE: Kennedy swam in the 100 meter freestyle race on Saturday and qualified in the B final. She finished 10th overall in the race with a time of 55.21 seconds — her slowest time of the season in the three Arena Pro Series races she has swum this season. She was 10th in 54.78 in Austin and ninth in 54.92 in Orlando.

In Mesa, Kennedy did have the fastest time at the 50 meter mark in the B final with a time of 26.39. Allison Schmidt won the B final with a time of 54.88. Kennedy’s time of 55.21 would have been good enough for seventh place in the championship final if she had qualified for it.

The next Arena Pro Series meet will be on May 11-12 in Charlotte where Kennedy currently lives and trains with SwimMAC Carolina.