Men’s 200 IM race footage is courtesy of swimswam partner Universal Sports Network.
Swimswam / Braden Keith coverage of the men’s 200 IM at the 2013 FINA World Championships:
Ryan Lochte had to wait 5 days to get his first gold medal at the 2013 World Championships, but when he got it, the swim was emphatic.
Despite all of the talk of who might challenge him, Lochte roared to a 1:54.98 to win the men’s 200 IM by over a second. The clear difference between Lochte this year and Lochte at the last World Championships (where he broke the World Record that still stands) is the endurance to close the last 50 meters, but he’s still every-bit-as-good on that first 150.
Kosuke Hagino from Japan finished 2nd in 1:56.29, coming up half-a-second shy of his personal best. He continues to be challenged on his breaststroke leg, where Lochte made up the bulk of the overall difference between the two, but he’s young enough (and from the right country) to improve that as he matures.
Brazil’s Thaigo Pereira took bronze in 1:56.30. Pereira over the last 18 months had changed his strategy in his IM’s, but this swim was more classic-Pereira: going out very hard, under World Record pace for 100 meters in fact, and then doing whatever he could to hang on for the freestyle leg. That’s as compared to 4th-place finisher Wang Shun, who was a 1:56.86 (a new Chinese National Record) who passed three swimmers on his freestyle leg, but left himself too much ground to make up with a horrendous backstroke leg. That seemed to be a plan by him, though, after having neither a good backstroke nor breaststroke leg in the semis, and it certainly worked for a huge time improvement (though not a medal).
Hungary’s Laszlo Cseh was 5th in 1:57.70, and the final was rounded out by Australian Daniel Tranter (1:57.88), Japan’s Daiya Seto (1:58.45), and Sweden’s Simon Sjoding (1:59.79).