Smit picked up her first victory of the evening when she came from behind in the 200m free to defeat Olympian Natalie Coughlin (Vallejo, Calif) by just three one-hundredths, and set a meet record of 1:57.34. Smit's time is the third-fastest American time ever recorded. Coughlin came in at 1:57.37, while teammate Erin Reilly (Sacramento, Calif.) rounded out the top three in 1:59.62.
"The 200 free was definitely a breakthrough for me," Smit said. "It was my best time by four seconds. It was a really big surprise when I looked on the scoreboard. I was astonished. My plan was to go out as fast as I could in the 200 and see how it goes."
Smit returned one event later to collect her second gold medal in the 400 IM. The Stanford swimmer destroyed the field with another meet record time of 4:38.48. Smit's final medal came in the 200m backstroke, swimming the first-place time of 2:14.34.
Trojan Swim Club's Ous Mellouli set a meet record in the men's 400m freestyle with a time of 3:44.79 while Olympian Larsen Jensen (Bakersfield, Calif.) was close behind, taking second in 3:44.86.
"It was fun," Jensen said. "It was a good race. I knew Ous would be fast and Klete would be fast. It was my best time by a few tenths, so any time you can go a personal best it's a good thing. Leading into Trials, that is a confidence booster. That was the result I was looking for tonight, with the exception that I finished second."
In other races, Pan American gold medalist Peter Marshall (Atlanta, Ga.) won the 200m backstroke with a time of 2:02.29, Elaine Breeden (Lexington, Ky.) swam the top time of 58.80 in the 100m butterfly and Cal Aquatics' Dominik Meichtry of Switzerland won the men's 200m free in 1:48.31. Trojan Swim Club's Vanni Mangoni of Italy claimed the men's 400 IM in 4:19.28 and Stanford's Jason Dunford of Kenya won the men's 100 butterfly in 53.44.
