Ian Thorpe raced away as the fastest qualifier in the 400m freestyle on the first day of the Stockholm leg of swimming's short course World Cup series to lead 10 Australians into the evening finals.

Thorpe eased home in his heat to win in 3min47.26sec - more than two and a half seconds ahead of the next fastest qualifier, Romanian Dragos Coman who clocked 3:49.93.

Commonwealth Games bronze medallist Tarnee White bounced back from the stomach bug which ruled her and 11 teammates out of last week's Paris meeting to qualify fastest in the 100m breaststroke.

She finished in 1:07.93 to edge out Sweden's world record holder Emma Igelstrom.

Seven of the swimmers who laid low in Paris reached tonight's finals, with world short course champion Jim Piper through in the 200m breaststroke as second fastest qualifier behind Britain's Ian Edmond, while Robert McDonald missed out by 0.36 of a second.

Josh Krogh qualified second for the 200m butterfly and two Australian women are into the final of the 100m butterfly with Lara Davenport the second fastest behind Slovakian veteran Martina Moracova in 59.94 while Felicity Galvez qualified in fourth place.

Backstrokers Ethan Rolff and Rachel Goh also recovered from missing Paris by making the finals of the men's 100m and women's 50m respectively.

Jessica Abbott clocked 2:14.37 to qualify fifth in the 200m individual medley while Rebecca Creedy is through in the 50m freestyle but missed out in the 200m by almost half a second.

Kelly Tucker also had a close call, swimming the ninth fastest time in the 200m backstroke to miss out by 0.37 of a second.

Josh Taylor was well down in the 100m IM as was Krogh in the 50m butterfly while Jason Cram missed qualifying in the 100m freestyle.

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