Paris Olympics: Comparing Maria Brunlehner's debut to other athletes in the 50m freestyle event

On Saturday, Maria Brunlehner took to the pool for her first-ever appearance at the Olympics, representing Kenya.

The 24 year old took part in the women’s 50m freestyle even where she came third after clocking 25.82 seconds.

Ahead of her in heat seven was Jenjira Srisa-Ad of Thailand (25.18 seconds) and Anick Delgado of Ecuador who finished in 25.43 seconds.

Uganda are hogging the limelight after winning an Olympics gold ahead of East African rivals Kenya and Tanzania who are still waiting for their first piece of silverware in Paris.

From a total of 10 heats in the 50m women’s freestyle swimming event at the Olympics contested by 79 women, Maria topped 6 of the total 10.

In heat 1 the fastest time was Bobimbo Vanessa from Congo who finished in a total time of 33.01 seconds

In heat 2 Saadi Maesha from Comoros with the fastest with 29.60 seconds and in heat 3 Irishura Lois from Burundi was the fastest with 29.63 seconds

Kenyan swimmer Maria Brunlehner finished third in her heat at the Paris Olympics but it was not enough to secure her ticket to the semi-final of the women’s 50m freestyle.

Lacour Noelie from Gobon topped heat 4 with 27.68 seconds while Kujaca Jovana from Montenegro was victorious in heat 5.

Pecherskikh Elizaveta topped heat 6 with 26.26 seconds. On the flip side, if you were to compare her result to the rest of of the heats, she would come last in every one of them as the average slowest time in heat 8 to 10 was 25.15 seconds.

Despite recording better time than more than half of the participants Maria did not rank 16th as that is the cut off rank for the semi-finals.