Japan’s\u00a0Ippei Watanabe<\/strong>, who earlier this year became the first man to break 2:07 in the event, qualified third at 2:09.30. China’s\u00a0Qin Haiyang<\/strong> posted a World Junior Record of 2:09.39 to qualify fourth for semis.<\/p>\n The USA’s\u00a0Kevin Cordes\u00a0<\/strong>(2:09.47), Italy’s\u00a0Luca Pizzini<\/strong> (2:09.86), the USA’s\u00a0Nic Fink<\/strong> (2:09.90) and Australia’s\u00a0Matthew Wilson<\/strong> (2:09.98) also broke 2:10 in prelims.<\/p>\n China’s\u00a0Feilian Mao<\/strong> (2:10.01) qualified ninth, while Kazakhstan’s\u00a0Dimitriy Balandin<\/strong>, the Olympic gold medalist from 2016, took 10th in 2:10.18. Sweden’s\u00a0Erik Persson<\/strong> (2:10.21), Japan’s\u00a0Yasuhiro Koseki<\/strong> (2:!0.38) and Germany’s\u00a0Marco Koch<\/strong> (2:10.40) qualified 11th through 13th, respectively. Koch was the defending World Champion in the event.<\/p>\n Russia’s\u00a0Ilya Khomenko\u00a0<\/strong>(2:10.43), the Netherlands’\u00a0Arno Kamminga\u00a0<\/strong>(2:11.00) and Switzerland’s\u00a0Yannick Kaeser\u00a0<\/strong>(2:11.00) rounded out the semi-final qualifiers.<\/p>\n Hungary’s\u00a0Daniel Gyurta<\/strong>, the 2012 Olympic gold medalist and multi-time World Champion in the event, finished 17th, one spot out of giving the Hungarian crowd a treat of having their man in the semi-finals.<\/p>\n Men’s 200 Breast Russia’s\u00a0Anton Chupkov cruised to the top time of the morning, posting a 2:08.23 to easily out-pace Great Britain’s\u00a0Ross Murdoch. Murdoch, at 2:08.98, was the only other man<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":152705,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,10],"tags":[59716],"class_list":["post-268809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-world","tag-2017-fina-world-championships"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\r\n![\"men-200-breast-prelims\"](\"https:\/\/vmrw8k5h.tinifycdn.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/men-200-breast-prelims.png\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"