Men’s 200 Breaststroke
The meet and World record fell in the first event of night three at the 2018 FINA SCM World Championships. Kirill Prigoda of Russia led start to finish to touch the wall in 2:00.16, slipping under Germany’s Marco Koch‘s World Record of 2:00.44. Koch was over a second back, touching third in 2:01.42.
The home crowd’s Haiyang Qin earned silver with a 2:01.15. After turning in second at the halfway mark, Japan’s Yasuhiro Koseki finished fourth (2:02.18).
American Josh Prenot finished fifth in 2:03.12, taking a tenth off his prelims swim, and moving him up to third on the All-Time US Performers list, just .05 ahead of Ed Moses.
Russia’s Mikhail Dorinov (2:03.20), the Netherlands’ Arno Kamminga (2:03.72), and Sweden’s Erik Persson (2:04.15) also competed in the final.
All-Time Rankings:
- Kirill Prigoda, RUS, 2:00.16 (2018)
- Marco Koch, GER, 2:00.44 (2016)
- Daniel Gyurta, HUN, 2:00.48 (2014)
- Qin Haiyang, CHN, 2:01.15 (2018)
- Daiya Seto, JPN, 2:01.30 (2017)
- Michael Jamieson, GBR, 2:01.43 (2013)
- Anton Chupkov, RUS, 2:01.57 (2018)
- Mikhail Dorinov, RUS, 2:01.85 (2017)
Prigoda is swimming exactly the way I wrote in articles published back in 2004. His head is under water in a beautiful streamline with every stroke, and notice the hips rocking upwards as his arms go forwards. These breaststrokers will soon be 2:05 for long course, and unfortunately I don’t see an American being within two seconds. Looking forwards to the first man under 2 minutes SCM.
Kirill could still improve his hand position at the end of the underwater pulldown, I have seen videos of this meet with much cleaner, closer to the body recovery of the hands. Amazing Kirill had the best split of every 50 during the race, if he had kept to 5 strokes per 25 he might get under the magic 2 minutes