Gold for Le Clos and Van der Burgh in Barcelona
It was a day that belonged to South Africa as Olympic Champions Chad le Clos and Cameron van der Burgh struck gold on the same evening at the 15th FINA World Swimming Championships in Barcelona last night.
Although Le Clos was the favourite for the men’s 200m butterfly after his epic victory against the famous Michael Phelps in London last year, the Durbanite was ‘not expecting an easy race as everyone was predicting.’
But the 21 year old actually set the pace and tone for the rest of the South Africans as he outswam his opposition to touch in 1:54,32; and doing his characteristic look either side as he approached the finish in amazement to all the coaches.
“It was on exactly the same day a year ago that Le Clos won Olympic gold!” said coach Graham Hill.
“His win yesterday means he has added the World Championship long course title to the titles as the Commonwealth Champion, World Short Course Champion and Olympic Champion.”
Le Clos finished ahead of Poland’s Pawel Korzeniowski in 1:55.01 and China’s Wu Peng in 1:55.09.
Just as Le Clos was re-writing the history books, Van der Burgh was doing the same thing a few events later.
The Olympic Champion and world record holder, despite down with a dose of flu, still managed to edge out arch-rival Christiaan Sprenger by just 0,01sec to clock 26,77sec.
But his excitement was more for his training partner, Giulio Zorzi, who from lane 8 raced in to snatch the bronze medal in a personal best 27,04sec.
"We have trained together all our lives,” said Van der Burgh. “First with Francois Boshoff, then Lionel Durandt , and this was for Lionel (Lionel passed away recently). From there we both joined Dirk Lange. Giulio's bronze almost means more to me than my gold! I won my first bronze at the World Championships in 2007 from lane 8."
In fact Van der Burgh is re-writing his own history as the only breaststroker to have won medals over four championships, 3rd in 2007, winning in 2009, finishing 3rd in 2011 and now another gold.
(File photo: Gallo Images)
- ECR Sportswave