Kevin Cordes looked “easy” in prelims, and still swam the all-time fastest 200 breaststroke by a full second. In the finals of the 2013 Men’s NCAA Championship 200 yard breaststroke, he didn’t look quite as easy…which explains why he cut more than a second off of the record. That means in one day, he’s taken this record down by over two seconds and is now two seconds faster than anybody else has ever been in this race. That’s the sort of stand-alone dominance we’ve only seen from some of the world’s great swimmers – Michael Phelps in the 400 meter IM, Sun Yang in the 1500 meter free, and Kevin Cordes in the 200 breaststroke.
| Cordes Finals | 24.61 | 27.58 | 28.59 | 27.90 | 1:48.68 |
| Cordes Prelims | 24.86 | 27.96 | 28.45 | 28.52 | 1:49.79 |
| Cordes ’12 | 24.92 | 28.45 | 28.49 | 28.87 | 1:50.73 |
The comparative splits show that Cordes was out much faster on the front-half, took about a 50 to recover, and torched his way toward home.
The second-fastest swimmer in history is Cody Miller from Indiana in 1:51.03. That’s 2.33 seconds slower, which calculates out to 2.14% slower. There are certainly other sports where records are 2% ahead of the second-best, but in swimming that sort of margin is almost unheard of over 200 yards.
Why doesn’t he swim the IM? He would be pretty fast in it.
Strokes remind me of another very fast breaststroker with a beautiful stroke – Ed Moses.
Phenomenal! Congrats Mr Cordes! 1.48.68 in the 200 breast! 52.19 in the first 100! And great finish! Can’t wait to see if he can now convert his SCY accomplishments to long course. I’m cautious. These are 2 different things. He looks more comfortable in the longer distance. I predict 59.50 and 2.08.50 next summer.
Bowman says this the greatest yards swim in history. I think it’s certainly the best in recent memory by a long shot.
How does the percentage difference compare to Ryan Lochte in the 200 IM SCM?
*Thanks
Your family is so proud of you Kevin! Look how cute your Grandmother looks:). That’s for always keeping us informed Swim Swam!
“That’s the sort of stand-alone dominance we’ve only seen from some of the world’s great swimmers – Michael Phelps in the 400 meter IM, Sun Yang in the 1500 meter free, and Kevin Cordes in the 200 breaststroke.”
really there’s been dominance like quite a few times actually
a) Phelps also dominated the 200 fly in the same way. He still has the top textile time by almost a seconds as the overall time by over a second. At one point he was also over a second faster than any man ever in the 200 free and 200 IM
b) People dominating the 1500 by over 5 seconds: Salnikov, Perkins and Hackett. All were many seconds faster than anyone else… Read more »
But here’s the thing – Egersegi wasn’t 2.23% better than the next-fastest. Nor was Thorpe. Nor was Egersegi. Nor is 5 seconds in the 1500 (in which case Yang doesn’t really apply either). The equivalent in the 1500 is like 17 seconds. Nor did Phelps in the 200 fly or the 200 free or the 200 IM.
Wanting 2% or more is some events is sicko… now is up to cordes to put up something amazing in LCM.. and taking Thorpe Sun is not a good example.. which would be the records os the 200 or more freestyle is these guys swam on SCY? I would not be surprised by a sub-14 min by Yang or sub 4 min by Thorpe..
i’ll admit that even among the greats i mentioned, few were winning by more than 2%.
in 2007 Phelps went 1:52.09 and beat the WR by 1.6 seconds. He beat the runner up in the race by a little over 3 seconds (2.6% margin of victory). As far as I can tell, judging by previous WRs and times from European Champs, Pan-Pacs, Worlds and the Olympics, only one other person had ever broken 1:55, which was Yamamoto going 1:54.56 in Athens. I can’t be 100% sure of this but I’m going to assume no one was bater the 1:54.5. Phelps’ ’07 time was 2.1% better than the next best ever, which is pretty close to 2.2%
but gyurta, Kosuke, nor any other japanese phenom, nor cameron have ever done SCY.
maybe kosuke did a gp while at usc, but the others im quite sure have not.
sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo, 2% shmoo percent. yes hes better than the guys who trained it.