World Championships, Night 2 Finals: Thomas Ceccon Caps Double with 50 Fly Gold

Thomas Ceccon of Italy competes in the 50m Butterfly Men Semifinal during the 20th World Aquatics Championships at the Marine Messe Hall A in Fukuoka (Japan), July 23rd, 2023.

Photo Courtesy: Andrea Staccioli / Deepbluemedia / Insidefoto

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World Championships, Night 2 Finals: Thomas Ceccon Caps Double with 50 Fly Gold

Thomas Ceccon had a busy night Monday at the World Aquatics Championships. Pretty darn good one, too.

Thirty-nine minutes after setting the top time in the semifinals of the men’s 100 backstroke, the Italian added a gold medal in the men’s 50 butterfly, zooming to the wall in a time of 22.68 seconds.

The time is an Italian record. He edged out Diogo Ribeiro, who out of Lane 1 booked a historical medal for Portugal and lowered his national and world junior records in the process to 22.80. Maxime Grousset rounded out the podium in third in 22.82.

“It was fast,” Ceccon said. “I wanted this medal so bad because last year I was fifth. I have done the repeat events before, so it is really hard for me mentally and physically, but today I did it. I am so happy with that. I was not preparing for this 50m final, just for the 100m backstroke semi-final, and I just tried to pull through.”

Grousset had been pushing the pace since Monday’s prelims. He led the way with the fastest time in prelims (22.74) and semifinals (22.72). Those lowered the French record, held jointly by Frederic Bousquet and Florent Manaudou, dating to 2009 and 2015, respectively.

Rose, though, pushed him hard in semis, going 22.79. It improved Rose’s 23.27 from prelims to go from a four-way tie for ninth to second.

The event featured two medalists from the 50 free in Budapest – Ben Proud, who won gold, and bronze-winner Grousset. Yet Ceccon and Proud were the only two holdovers from last year’s final, finishing fifth and seventh, respectively. Neither gold medalist Caeleb Dressel, silver-winner Nicholas Santos (retired) and third-place Michael Andrew are taking part in the meet. Dressel won the event at each of the last two worlds.

“I have a lot of medals, but I don’t have the gold,” Grousset said. “I have the silver, I have the bronze medal. Now, I want to win the gold.”

Proud finished fifth in 22.91. Countryman Jacob Peters was fourth in 22.84, just 0.02 off the podium. American Dare Rose, who had a great morning swim, was sixth at night in 23.01. Seventh went to Austria’s Simon Bucher, who bested Dylan Carter in a swimoff to get to the final, with Abdelrahman Sameh of Egypt eighth.

It was a PB for Peters who said through British Swimming:

“It’s not really kicked in yet. Obviously I’m happy with fourth in the world – it’s a big step up from last year, last year I didn’t even make it out of the heats.

“But obviously fourth place is probably the worst place to come in the final, especially when it’s so close. I’ve got to take it on the chin, I’ve still got the 100m and the relays to go, so I’ve just got to reset and maybe I can get on the podium in the 100m, we’ll have to wait and see. I’m in a pretty good spot, so I’ll just try to use that momentum to carry me through the meet.”

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