With the flurry of swims that tend to happen in major competition weeks, it can can be easy to overlook some of the tremendous swims that seem to happen all in the same week. Luckily, with a few weeks off to regroup going into the new year, we have a chance to highlight one such swim from the end of 2016: Chad le Clos’ world record swim in the 100 butterfly.
Coming off what le Clos has called a disappointing Olympic Games where he failed to repeat his gold medal performance in the men’s 200 fly from London, le Clos was dominant at the 2016 FINA Short Course World Championships in Windsor, Canada. While the South African picked up three gold medals in a sweep of the 50-100-200 butterfly events, his most impressive performance was his 100 butterfly.
Touching in 48.08, he took down his own championship and world record of 48.44 from the 2014 Doha edition of the meet. Out fast in 22.59, le Clos motored home in 25.49 to beat the rest of the field by nearly a second. That moves le Clos closer to becoming the first man to swim the short course version of the event in under 48 seconds. Take a look at le Clos’ post-race interview below:
Congratulations Chad le Clos on earning Swimming World’s Performance of the Week!
Special Thanks to LumaLanes for sponsoring Swimming World’s Performance of the Week.
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Ma Boiiiii Badreddine Loulidi
Now that Phelps is retired, Chad could pursue Phelps’ records to show that he’s better than Michael.
He’s swimming some great times already this season.
If he broke 50 seconds in the 100 LC fly and 1:52 in the 200 LC Fly in a textile suit, Chad could make a claim of being the best butterflyer ever.