Olympic champion Chad le Clos came ever so close to breaking the world record in the 100m butterfly last night but set a global ‘textile best’ instead – the second-fastest in the history of the event.
Le Clos clocked 48.59 seconds to take gold ahead of American Tom Shields, who touched the wall in 49 seconds.
Only one time is faster than Le Clos’ yesterday, the world record of 48.48, set at a time of shiny suits by Evgeny Korotyshkin, the Russian who shared Olympic silver in the 100m with Le Clos at London 2012.
It was Le Clos’ third gold in as many races in Dubai this week and he added a fourth soon after with a 1:51.56 in the 200m medley.
The four golds took the South African’s total to seven wins from seven starts in the World Cup series so far and he was crowned champion of the cluster alongside Katinka Hosszu, earning an extra $50,000 bonus cheque.
“I feel great. A little tired right now. I’m just really happy with the way the two legs have gone. Doha for me, I didn’t expect to swim so fast. Obviously coming to Dubai, like I say, it’s my second home pool so I always swim well here,” Le Clos told Sport360.
“Undefeated again so I’m really happy. It wasn’t about the time in the medley tonight I just wanted to win and try to be as close as I could to my best time so I did a PB by more than half a second.
“In the 100 fly I wanted to try and break the world record tonight but unfortunately I just missed it.
“But it’s been a great two days for me in Dubai. Four from four and seven from seven overall so you can’t be more pleased than that.”
Hungarian Daniel Gyurta, who set a world record in the 200m breaststroke on day one, added a second gold to his tally by claiming the 100m last night, despite feeling heavy after the previous day’s heroics.
There was another world textile best swum yesterday by Dutchwoman Inge Dekker, who clocked 24.59 seconds in the 50m butterfly. Therese Alshammar’s world record of 24.38 seconds was set in 2009 in the shiny suits. Dekker has now won eight out of eight events she entered in this year’s World Cup series.
“I feel really happy especially after today. My 100 free was really good and I smashed by PB in the 50 fly so I’m really really happy with that,” said Dekker.
“I improved it by 0.41 seconds and that time was from 2009, so it’s five years old, so I’m really happy to swim so much faster now.”
Dubai’s Velimir Stjepanovic added a second silver to his meet tally, coming runner-up in the 200m freestyle. The Serbian Hamilton Aquatics swimmer was leading for most of the race before he was out-touched by Australia’s Thomas Fraser-Holmes.
“I always knew Fraser-Holmes would have a much faster last 50 (metres) than I did so I just tried to take it out hard. It didn’t work out for me, it was close," said Stjepanovic, who is a European champion in the event.
“It probably would have been an even closer race if we were next to each other but when we’re on opposite sides of the pool it’s hard to see especially with my eyesight. There’s still time though. Worlds is coming up in December so there’s still time.”
