FINA and swimnews reports here on Moss' incredible 200 buterfly final.
swimnews
The 200m butterfly, one of Michael Phelps’ favourite events, not only meant business as usual for him - winning the gold medal in a world record time.
It meant also something transcendent: in fact with this gold medal, the 11th he has won individually at the Olympics, Phelps became the most individual gold medal winner with 11 (no one has done better than nine), a tally that he is likely to increase through the rest of this week.
Phelps managed to win in 1:52.03, a new world record by 0.06 seconds. This was the 7th world record set by Phelps in this event in seven years. He could have swum faster if he had not experienced problems with goggles. He explained: “I couldn’t see anything for the last 100, my goggles pretty much filled up with water; it just kept getting worse through the race. I wanted to go 1:51 or better but for the circumstances I guess it’s not too bad”.
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Michael Phelps (USA)
Both the silver and the bronze medallists, respectively Laszlo Cseh of Hungary and Takeshi Matsuda of Japan swam an amazing race, under 1:53 and well under the Olympic record set twice (in both the preliminaries and the semi-finals) from Phelps here in Beijing with 1:53.70.
Cseh took the silver in 1:52.70, Matsuda the bronze in 1:52.97 setting respectively a European and an Asian record. Moss Burmester, of New Zealand, and Peng Wu, of China, dead-heated for the 4th place in 1:54.35: a new Oceanian record for Burmester. Pawel Korzeniowski (POL, 6th in 1:54.60) and Kaio Almeida (BRA, 7th 1:54.71) also swam under 1:55, confirming the excellent level of this final.
Cseh, who had been competing in this event only for the second time, was very happy with his achievements (“I’m surprised, I’m happy, I enjoyed it. I’m still lacking the experience but I had a good time and a good result. I believe I am reducing the gap between me and Phelps”).
Record breakout and comparison (in bracket Phelps’ former world record splits from Melbourne 2007):
- Phelps: 25.36 (25.26), 53.53 (53.62), 1:22.75 (1.22.87), 1:52.03 (1.52.09)
- Cseh: 25.58, 54.59, 1:23.39, 1:52.70
- Matsuda: 25.58, 54.41, 1:23.58, 1:52.79
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