2022 FINA WORLD AQUATICS CHAMPIONSHIPS
- June 18-25, 2022 (pool swimming)
- Budapest, Hungary
- Duna Arena
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During Day 1 finals of the 2022 World Championships, Great Britain’s quartet of Lewis Burras, Jacob Whittle, Matt Richards, and Tom Dean broke the British National Record in the men’s 4×100 freestyle relay in a time of 3:11.14.
The time lowers the previous mark of 3:11.56, set at the 2021 European Championships in the same pool here in Budapest.
After missing the Olympic final, the Brits were looking to bounce back, and they did so in a big way. In addition to their record, they held onto their fourth place seed, touching in 3:11.14, .19 seconds behind bronze medalists Italy.
Making the performance more impressive is the fact that they managed to do it without the country’s individual 100 free record holder, Duncan Scott.
Split Comparison:
| 2022 World Champs | Split | 2021 European Champs | Split |
| Lewis Burras | 48.09 | Tom Dean | 48.32 |
| Jacob Whittle | 47.91 | Matt Richards | 48.13 |
| Matt Richards | 48.19 | James Guy | 47.92 |
| Tom Dean | 46.95 | Duncan Scott | 47.19 |
| 3:11.14 | 3:11.56 |
The biggest difference between the two relays is Dean’s 46.96 anchor. That’s a monster split from Dean, who’s never broken 48 seconds on a flat start. His lifetime best is 48.06 from this spring’s British Championships. Dean has opted for the 200 IM over the 100 free in Budapest, so unless he leads off the mixed relay, we’ll likely have to wait until Commonwealth Games to if he’s able to break the 48-second barrier.
Though they were slower this year through their middle 100 by a tenth, Burras’s lead-off of 48.09 helped carry them as well. That’s also an encouraging swim for him, as he was 48.69 leading off in prelims. It’s also a good sign for the rest of their relays at 2022 Worlds that Matt Richards looks in much better form than he was at British Trials.
Next up individually, Dean and Richards have the 200 free on Day 2, where Dean will begin the defense of his Olympic gold medal. Burras and Whittle won’t race individually until the 100 free on Day 4.
If anything this just further illustrates to me how far away they are from contention here.
This was the weakest Aussie team in years, Italy was much worse than last year, Dressel was pedestrian, the U.S. was without perennial 46+ guy Apple, and still they are 2 seconds clear.
All credit to the Aussies for stepping up, but personally the GB result heightened my belief in our ability to compete moving forward. They missed a medal by 0.2 despite the NR holder (and general relay beast) being unavailable, and two teenagers (lets not forget that) not being quite at their best in finals. Suspect we’ll see Scott back in the picture with the emergence of Marchand and Foster today – At that point, bring it on!
I’m not even really trying to be that hard on them.
Relay enthusiast (amongst others) was trying to tell me 2 days ago in the preview that team GB was a threat for Gold here and in the future.
I just don’t see it, all this talk about Duncan Scott is fair enough, I’m a big Duncan Scott fan, but one heroic swim doesn’t move the needle much for me. Apple has actually been 46 more times in his career than Scott.
Well, gold talk is indeed entirely different than general medal contention talk haha. I don’t see gold myself, but they’re by far the youngest team out there so you never know how they progress. For me, GBR are the only team I see that *could* step it up and challenge the US, but the chances of it happening are slim. I do see them making the podium in 2024 though.
I have to agree 100% with this article’s assessment. TEAM GB probably wasn’t going to medal without Duncan Scott, so, their national record is truly impressive. So much more depth today than I saw a decade ago in London 2012! Well done, lads!
Whittle and Richards literally went quite a bit slower than this morning. If they had swam even the same times as this morning they’d comfortably have won silver
Matt and whittle bottled it completely, was poor tbh. James guy should off probably been in that aswell
I think being 2 tenths slower than the heat isn’t really bottling it, they’re young guys with not much muscle mass at the moment so a free relay is difficult with the waves, they’ll come good by Paris, its all part of the journey
Indeed – Teenagers with long summers ahead, lets not get on their backs. Not quite at their best, but they swam creditably.
Whittle just had a bad changeover, otherwise wasn’t too far off this morning, plus he was jumping into a tonne of waves. The boy did decently!
They’re both still teenagers, plenty of time for them to learn from this and make sure it doesn’t happen again.
None of them touched Duncan Scott final leg in 2019 and that man is/ was faster in April 2022 in the events he entered. He’s the real deal.