Pieter Coetzé bagged the third seeding position in Tuesday’s 100m backstroke final at the world championships in Singapore after a pair of hard-fought semifinals on Monday night.
The South African, who set a 51.99 sec world lead at the World Student Games in Germany just more than a week ago, touched second in the second heat in 52.29, behind Hungarian Hubert Kos, the Olympic champion in the 200m backstroke, in 52.21.
Russian Kliment Kolesnikov won the first semifinal in 52.26, just nine-hundredths of a second ahead of the Olympic champion in this event, Italy’s Thomas Ceccon, also owner of the 51.60 world record, who kept enough in reserve to clinch bronze in the 50m butterfly half an hour later.
“I just wanted to make it back for the final and I was happy with the time and the swim. And to get second in the semis is a good result,” said Coetzé, who is racing against Russian competitors, competing under the neutral banner, for the first time.
“I knew it was going to be fast ... I’ve swum with most of these guys, but the Russians are new to me. I haven’t swum against them and they’re also really fast, but I don’t really focus on the people I’m racing against. I just focus on what I need to do.”
Just 0.36 sec — or the blink of an eye — separated the eight fastest swimmers, who included Oliver Morgan of Britain (52.41), Apostolos Chrisou of Greece (52.44), Frenchman Yohann Ndoye-Brouard (52.47) and Russia’s Miron Lifintsev (52.57).
It’s probably the greatest depth of competition a South African swimmer has ever faced.
Roland Schoeman and Ryk Neethling saw 0.82 sec separating the top eight of the men’s 100m freestyle semi-finalists at Athens 2004.
Just 0.75 sec separated the top eight 100m butterfly semi-finalists at Rio 2016, where Chad Le Clos ended up in a dead-heat for second place.
In the 100m breaststroke that year, 0.4 sec separated No 2 from No 8 in the semifinals — way behind pacesetter English Adam Peaty — with Cameron van der Burgh going on to take silver.
One of the big casualties on Monday night was China’s Olympic 100m backstroke silver medallist, Jiaya Xu, who touched in a distant 53.14.
The ninth-quickest was Poland’s Ksawery Masiuk, whose 52.67 would easily have made the top eight at the 2024 Paris Games and would have made the podium at the 2019 world championships.
Coetzé ended fifth in this race in France a year ago, but now he is competing at the cutting edge of men’s backstroke, and is hoping to win South Africa’s first medal of the gala on Tuesday.
“I know what I need to do, so I’ll just go and look at the video and see where I can work on things and come back refreshed tomorrow.”
The race is scheduled for 1.56pm (South African time).
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