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MEN’S 200 BUTTERFLY – FINALS
2012 World Champ: 1:51.01 – Kazuya Kaneda -Japan
2010 World Champ: 1:51.56 – Chad le Clos – South Africa
Meet Record: 1:50.82 – Daiya Seto – 2014
World Record: 1:48.56 – Chad le Clos – South Africa – 2013
The men’s 200 butterfly may have been the most exciting race of the night so far. South African Chad le Clos went after his own world record aggressively turning over a half second under world record pace at the 100 meter mark. Daiya Seto of Japan, who set a new championship record in the prelims, turned just four one-hundredths of a second behind le Clos at the halfway point.
In the third 50 Seto took the lead heading into the final 50 meters 16 one-hundredths of a second ahead of le Clos and under world record pace. Seto did not have enough to hang on to the lead as le Clos took over once again winning the race in a time of 1:48.61 just missing his world record time of 1:48.56.
Seto finished second in a new Japanese record time of 1:48.92.
Pawel Korzeniowski of Poland took the bronze in a time of 1:50.21.
American Tom Shields finished fourth in a time of 1:50.68.
Viktor Bromer of Denmark finished fifth posting a 1:52.13 which breaks his own Danish record of 1:52.19 which he set in October.
Russian Aleksandr Kudashev finished sixth in a time of 1:52.17 followed by Nikolay Skvortsov of Russia who posted a 1:52.52 and Australian Grant Irvine who recorded a 1:52.69.
Seliskar would have been fifth! Incredible.
I think the emergence of Seto can be only good for the 200 butterfly. I see a start of a great rivalry between the two , we are still going to see many great races between them and they are still young.