Trawl through history and it is hard to find a tighter finish over 800m freestyle that that which ended in four women racing between 8:12.27 and 8:12.91. The victor was Lotte Friis, of Denmark, followed by Erika Vilaecija (ESP), 8:12.40; Alessia Filippi (ITA), 8:12.84; and US-based Flavia Rigamonti (SUI), 8:12.91. Each of those efforts set a national record.

Filippi was on schedule to break the European record until 50m togo but miscounted the laps. At 600m, she had built up a lead of more than 1sec, and at the 100m-to-go mark still had a bodylength advantage and a sub 8:10 looked possible. At 750, she stopped, sensed her mistake and tried to fire the engine again. The splits are a painful witness to her mistake:

The first four home follow the leading lady on the world rankings - Kate Ziegler (USA) set a scorching 8:08.00 world record in Essen, Germany, back in October. All-time, the four are also now ranked 3rd to 6th fastest behind the American, Laure Manaudou (FRA), whose European record stood the Debrecen challenge at 8:11.25, and the doping-banned Russian Anastacia Ivanenko, and ahead of Olympic champion Ai Shibata (JPN).