Budapest 2024, Day 3 Finals: Jack Alexy Wins 100 Free As 0.10 Separates First Three Home
Jack Alexy claimed the 100m freestyle title at the short-course worlds as just 0.10 separated the first three men home in Budapest.
Alexy moved into the lead on the penultimate 25 before coming home in 45.38 with Guilherme Santos second in 45.47 and Jordan Crooks third in 45.48.
Crooks, who swims out of the University of Tennessee, rattled the world record in prelims with a championship standard of 44.95. With that, he moved within 0.11 of the 44.84 WR set by Kyle Chalmers in Kazan, Russia, in October 2021.
He’d had eclipsed Jack Alexy’s CR from the previous evening with the USA swimmer posting 45.05 on lead-off as the USA men’s 4×100 free quartet lowered the WR during the opening finals session.
Crooks became the first athlete from the Cayman Islands to win a medal in any sport in World Championship history when he powered to the 50 free title at Melbourne 2022 ahead of Great Britain’s Ben Proud and Dylan Carter of Trinidad and Tobago.
But it was Chris Giuliano who set the early pace, leading after 25 and halfway and reached the 50m mark ahead of Alexy and Santos with Crooks in fifth.
Come the final turn and Alexy went into first ahead of Giuliano with Crooks back in seventh. The Cayman Islands swimmer posted an 11.61 final 25 to come past the field and take third.
“The times were not super fast tonight off the board,” said Alexy. “I can build on the relay successes. Each race is a success in some way, sometimes it goes your way, sometimes it doesn’t. I try to learn something from each of my swims and get better and better.”