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The sting of finishing second in the 100 breaststroke at the FINA world championships carried over to the 50 breast prelims for South Africa’s Cameron Van Der Burgh, resulting in a world record of 26.62 in the sprint event.
“After the … bittersweet disappointment from last night not having the luck of the touch, and today I had the luck of the touch,” he said. “That’s the difference between a world record and not having a world record.”
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He knows the competition in tonight’s semifinal and tomorrow’s final will not be easy, with Adam Peaty and Damir Dugonjic two of the people he mentions being on his radar.
“I’m definitely not the favorite by a long shot,” he said.
Despite the issue surrounding Peaty’s unratified 26.62 from last year as the world record, Van Der Burgh was always confident that he or someone else would break his world record of 26.67 from the 2009 world championships sooner or later.
“I knew we were going to break it,” he said. “That time should have been eclipsed quite a while ago. I would have liked to have broken it in Barcelona two years ago (when he won the world title), but unfortunately I got sick for the final.
“Come tonight or tomorrow night, this record is not going to stand.”
