2021 SYDNEY OPEN
- Thursday, May 13th – Sunday, May 16th
- Sydney Olympic Park Aquatic Centre
- LCM (50m)
- Heats at 6pm local; Finals at 9am local
- Meet Site
- Start List
- SwimSwam Preview
- Results or Meet Mobile
While competing on the final day of action of the 2021 Sydney Open, 22-year-old Zac Stubblety-Cook put up the swim of his life in the men’s 200m breaststroke.
Topping the field by over 7 seconds, the Chandler swimmer scorched a personal best of 2:07.00 to grab gold, inserting himself onto the list of the world’s top performers all-time in the process.
Entering this Sydney Open, Stubblety-Cook’s personal best rested at the 2:07.36 he logged at the 2019 FINA World Championships. There in Gwangju, that time rendered him in 4th place behind world record-setter Anton Chupkov of Russia (2:06.12), fellow Australian Matt Wilson (2:06.68) and Ippei Watanabe of Japan’s 2:06.73.
Stubblety-Cook’s 2:07.00 this morning was comprised of splits of 1:02.32 on the way out and 1:04.68 on the way home, ranking the Aussie as the world’s 6th fastest 200m breaststroke of all-time.
All-Time Men’s 200m Breaststroke Performers:
- Anton Chupkov (RUS), 2:06.12 2019
- Shoma Sato (JPN), 2:06.40, 2021
- Matt Wilson (AUS), 2:06.67 & Ippei Watanabe (2:06.67) 2017
- tie
- Arno Kamminga (NED), 2:06.85 2020
- Zac Stubblety-Cook (AUS), 2:07.00 2021
More locally, Stubblety-Cook now becomes Australsita’s 2nd fastest performer to date, jumping ahead of retired Olypian Christan Sprenger.
With his mighty 2:07.00 performance, Stubbley-Cook now ranks as the 3rd fastest man in the world this season.
2020-2021 LCM Men 200 Breast
Stubblety-Cook
2:06.28
| 2 | Shoma Sato | JPN | 2:06.40 | 04/07 |
| 3 | Arno Kamminga | NED | 2:06.85 | 12/04 |
| 4 | Anton Chupkov | RUS | 2:06.99 | 05/20 |
| 5 | Ippei Watanabe | JPN | 2:07.08 | 12/06 |
Of note, Wilson was in last night’s prelims, posting a top time of 2:08.60 to Stubblety-Cook’s 2:08.92 before dropping the final.
Why doesn’t Zac have a Swim Swam profile?
I was mostly impressed with the way he split final swim….looking ahead to racing Chupvkov with a sick back half!
It’s a shame we can’t see the splits on the results.
Inconvenient but you can look up the splits in the Swimming Australia results db:
https://www.swimming.org.au/events/results-central
It’s a crowded field and there are bigger names but I don’t think anyone has gone this fast whilst still in heavy training. Anything can happen inTokyo but right now I would put my money on him for the gold.
And of course doing this time without any competition- the 2nd place was 7 secs back. It was a real shame that MW didn’t swim as these 2 push each other to the top of their game. Anyway 2 can be selected in the Australian team. The fight might be over who will swim the Medley relay!
The AUS QT is quite a tough one (2.08.28). For both S-Cook & Wilson (in form), this is a time they should have little problems with and, indeed, one they would “knock out” in lead-in meets. S-Cook has “knocked it out of the park however, Wilson has yet to post one. As for the 100 QT (59.21), Wilson HAS bettered in the past but S-Cook is only a recent inductee to the sub-minute club. For both “in form”, its in play but no certainty however whoever makes the team in the 200 is likely to get a start in the 100, conditional on their 100 time(s) being somewhere near the mark.
There are 2 place per event, so I would like to think they will both qual for the 200m, then I assume they apply the Olympic qual times for the 100m if they don’t qual based on the Australian qual time of 59.21s. Not sure what this is but it’s probably under a minute.
Americans simply don’t have the work ethic to be good in this, the hardest men’s event.
4IM? 2FL?
Apart from the patent nonsense of this statement by LaBlom [cf. below rebuttal!], there is a very simple cultural reason: in most countries of Europe, Asia, and esp. Japan, it is the breaststroke that is usually taught first; thus, it becomes the go-to stroke. While in the USA, the crawl or freestyle is almost always taught as the first stroke.
In the UK I remember kids were always taught backstroke first. Hmmmm…
Not sure why Matt Wilson has a habit of not wanting to swim morning finals .. is he not wanting to race stubblety cook before trials ?
I would have thought getting to race morning finals with a fellow top swimmer would have been incentive enough to get some finals experience before Tokyo
And faster times for both you would think, alsohaving the psychological advantage for trials, who knows why there were a lot of obviously tired swimmers racing at different types of preparation Next month will tell!
He’s seemed somewhat off his game in his outings so far this year. Not sure of the reasons for skipping so many finals but he’s looked frustrated at times with his times.
Wilson narrowly missed Rio games didn’t he from memory ? And this was a perfect opportunity to test his mettle against top quality international level competition given Australians can’t even go outside the country .. and he’s decided to skip that opportunity presented to him before Tokyo
My money is on Stubblety Cook to Tokyo as he seems to have the edge mentally with a couple of good swims this meet
Actually , Wilson always swims same times whether its prelims, Semis or Finals.
Look at 2019 WC.
I think after his prelims, he was able to get a clear indication about where he is at.
One of the common criticism of Australian swimming is that they don’t get as much racing experience compared to their American counterparts with the NCAA system etc and that swimming is only ever known during the Olympics but is not really wel known as a sport outside the Olympics
I think the fact that the top swimmers are reluctant to swim domestic events even when they have the perfect opportunity to do so (ie no lockdowns etc) but still don’t want to race each other outside the Olympics answers both those issues above
Exactly Verram, I see the Americans who are always honing their skills in races & yet in the last few events, despite the lack of competitive races we see our (Australia’s) top swimmers pulling out for 1 reason or another.
i think top Aussie swimmers prefer to “train” than race each other as recent months have shown .. wrap themselves in cotton wool and bubble wrap until Tokyo olympics … then they complain about lack of race fitness ?
Is it the swimmers or the coaches ? To my mind, its a mix of both but probably more weighted toward the latter. I would agree that the racing culture isn’t as ingrained into the AUS swim as other countries but I was actually heartened how readily so many AUS swimmers took to ISL season 1 but there were only 1-2 coaches involved. Also almost all top line AUS coaches are products of the AUS “system” and that’s all they know …… and very few have been willing to widen their horizons (Taylor a clear exception and much further back the likes of Talbot & Sweetenham). One can understand the motivation of Swim AUS stance re ISL2 however, in hindsight,… Read more »
What did McKeon swim in the 200free?
she didn’t swim it.
How did McKeown go in the 200im?
I am going to say it right now, if the 200 breast WR doesn’t get significantly faster over the next year I will be shocked beyond belief. There are so many people capable of breaking it that it’s hard to believe the 2:06 and even the 2:05 barrier will stand for much longer.
Yep- and it maybe a crap shoot of 5 0r 6 swimmers charging for the line, a bit like 2016.
At some point it’ll have to stall out. Right now it feels like it’s dropping a second every quad.