Pandemonium In The Sprint Ranks: Dissecting An Inscrutable 46.40 - Part 1
In the tussle between those who roar out and hold on and those who hold fire and then spark when hunting down those who roar out, there had never been a swimmer capable of racing to the turn inside 22.5 and returning inside 24.5. There is one now - and how!
In the summer of 2022, 17-year-old David Popovici changed the game in the 100m freestyle when he confined shiny suit speed to history with a 46.86 World record in Rome.
As our main image shows, here's how he did it:
- 22.74, 24.12 - 46.86
Worth noting this: in the tussle between those who roar out and hold on and those who hold fire and then spark when hunting down those who roar out, there had never been a swimmer capable of racing to the turn inside 22.5 and returning inside 24.5.
Popovici's stunning swim in 2022 gave us the best of a classic 'hold fire/hunt down' 100.
It was almost a perfect reverse of the record young David had broken, the 46.91 WR of Cesar Cielo:
- 22.17, 24.74 - 46.91
As we arrived in Paris for the 2024 Olympic Games, those two swims remained the best of their opposite ends of a spectrum of 'how we balance a 100m free'.
Of course, there's a middle to every spectrum and the closest anyone ever came to under-22.5 out, under-24.5 back was this stunning swim from Aussie sprint ace Cameron McEvoy in 2016:
- 47.04 - 22.54, 24.50
