Ippei Watanabe Lowers 200 Breast Olympic Record In Semi-Finals

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Photo Courtesy: Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports

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Men’s 200 Breast Semi-Finals:

Japan’s Ippei Watanabe jumped to an early lead in heat one of the men’s 200 breaststroke semi-finals, not letting up until his hands touched the wall in Olympic Record fashion. Watanabe touched the wall in a 2:07.22 to take down the existing record of 2:07.28 set in 2012 by Hungary’s Daniel Gyurta.

Great Britain’s Andrew Willis and the USA’s Kevin Cordes battled the World Record line and each other throughout heat two but at the end it was Willis who got his hand to the wall first. Willis stopped the clock at  a 2:07.73 ahead of Cordes’ 2:07.99 (good for fifth).

Josh Prenot of the USA picked up the third place seed with a time of 2:07.78, just ahead of Japan’s Yasuhiro Koseki’s 2:07.91.

Top-ranked swimmer coming into semi-finals, Anton Chupkov of Russia, slipped to sixth in the rankings with a 2:08.08, just ahead of Germany’s Marco Koch (2:08.12).

Kazakhstan’s Dmitriy Balandin picked up the eighth place seed with a 2:08.20.

Full results from tonight’s semifinals and finals are available here.

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Bill Bell
7 years ago

Balandin’s second final. Bet he’ll be only Kazakh to final in any event (m/w)

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