New world 100m backstroke champion Pieter Coetzé threw down the gauntlet in the 200m backstroke on Thursday as he claimed pole position for the final on Friday at the World Aquatics Championships in Singapore.
Coetzé, racing on his own out in lane eight after taking the final 16th spot in the morning heats, sped across the eight laps to win his evening semifinal in a 1 min 54.22 sec African record.
His time would have won gold at the Paris Olympics in 2024.
Frenchman Yohann Ndoye-Brouard won the other semifinal in 1:54.47, just ahead of Olympic champion Hubert Kos of Hungary in 1:54.64.
Coetzé, who ended seventh in this event at the Paris showpiece, is a racer and will surely thrive when swimming alongside his main rivals.
But it is worth remembering that Kos, who has a 1:54.14 best, could have more gas in the final.
An hour and 17 minutes before his backstroke semifinal, he competed in the 200m individual medley final, taking bronze behind French superstar Léon Marchand and American Shaine Casas.
Coetzé is bidding to become the second South African to win a 100m—200m world championship double after Chad le Clos in the butterfly in 2013.
Earlier, Kaylene Corbett advanced to the 200m breaststroke final as she ended fourth in her semifinal in 2:23.81, ranking seventh overall.
Corbett is no stranger to the big time, having swum in the 200m breaststroke finals at the Tokyo and Paris Olympics, as well as the 2019 world championships and even the 2018 and 2022 Commonwealth Games.
But this will be the first time she’s competing without her retired training partner, Tatjana Smith.
Up front, American Olympic champion Kate Douglass (2:20.96) and Russian world record-holder Evgeniia Chikunova (2:20.65) are expected to battle it out for gold in Friday’s final.
In the morning action, Rebecca Meder, racing in the lane next to Corbett in their heat, ended sixth in 2:28.40 to rank 24th overall.
She was well outside the 2:23.61 she swam to claim the national title in April.
Erin Gallagher won her 100m freestyle heat in 55.01, but it was not enough to book her spot in the evening session, ranking her 27th overall.
The slowest qualifying swim was 54.38, a time the owner of the 54.23 SA record has not achieved since 2019.
The SA women’s 4x200m freestyle team of Aimee Canny, Georgia Nel, Hannah Robertson and Catherine van Rensburg ended 10th in the only heat of the morning in 8:13.06.
They would have needed to break the 8:01.56 national mark by nearly three seconds to make the final.
The only South Africans in action on Friday morning are Gallagher in the women’s 50m freestyle and Van Rensburg in the women’s 800m freestyle.
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