19-Year Old Alexander Norgaard Breaks Danish Record in 1500 Free by 8 Seconds

2019 FINA WORLD AQUATICS CHAMPIONSHIPS

19-year old Alexander Norgaard has whacked 8 seconds off the Danish National Record in the men’s 1500 free prelims, swimming a 14:47.75 to qualify for the final. That final will be held on Sunday evening in Gwangju during the last session of the World Championships.

Norgaard broke his own record of 14:55.57 that was set at the Danish Open in April. The old record before April was a 14:58.55 set in 2009 by Mads Galesner.

This is Norgaard’s first swim of the World Championships; he didn’t race the 800 free, where his lifetime best of 7:57 (done in July of 2017) would have placed him 21st. He would have needed to cut 9 seconds off that time to make the top 8 in final, which isn’t unreasonable given his drop in the 1500.

In the 3 months since his old record, Norgaard moved a little more speed to the front-end of his race: by 1000 meters  he had built most of his margin ahead of Danish Record pace (8.35 seconds). He gave a little back over the last 500 meters, but a big final kick kept the record-setting margin close to 8 seconds.

Alexander Norgaard Alexander Norgaard
Worlds (July 2019) Nationals (April 2019)
100m 56.86 57.16
200m 59.12 59.93
300m 59.27 60.29
400m 59.39 60.52
500m 59.43 60.53
600m 59.56 60.40
700m 59.27 60.89
800m 59.70 60.64
900m 59.74 60.05
1000m 59.69 59.97
1100m 59.85 59.58
1200m 59.72 59.22
1300m 59.76 59.45
1400m 59.20 59.25
1500m 57.19 57.68
Total Time 14:47.75 14:55.56

In the final, he will race a very competitive field that took 14:55.06 to make top 8 in prelims. That’s the fastest in history by some margin: the previous best came in 2015, where it took 14:57.82 to make the final. Norgaard will be the youngest swimmer in that final by more than two-and-a-half years: he was born in March of 2000, while the #2 qualifier Florian Wellbrock of Germany was born in August of 1997.

Norgaard is scheduled to move to American and train at NC State, where his country’s other top male distance swimmer Anton Ipsen trains, in 2020.

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Oldswimfan
5 years ago

NC State got a good one!

Christine Jacobsen
5 years ago

Glad to see the Danish men performing well – and the danes in general after a turbulent spring .

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Braden Keith

Braden Keith is the Editor-in-Chief and a co-founder/co-owner of SwimSwam.com. He first got his feet wet by building The Swimmers' Circle beginning in January 2010, and now comes to SwimSwam to use that experience and help build a new leader in the sport of swimming. Aside from his life on the InterWet, …

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