Jacob Johnson Is Living Below the Minnesota Record in the 200 Fly

Armand “Mondo” Duplantis is a Swedish-American pole vaulter who has attracted more media attention than maybe any pole vaulter in history.

An electric entertainer, Duplantis has broken the pole vault World Record 10 consecutive times, bumping the record up by a centimeter each time and cashing in on a World Record bonus over-and-over.

While it’s without the financial incentive, that’s starting to feel like what Minnesota freshman Jacob Johnson is doing to the University of Minnesota record in the 200 yard butterfly.

Johnson cleared the school’s record in that event again over the weekend at the Minnesota Invite, bringing his record count to three in that event in his first semester of collegiate swimming.

The old record of 1:42.47 was done at last year’s Big Ten Championships by Kaiser Neverman, a current 5th year on the time. He qualified for the NCAA Championships and had his best finish, 30th place, in the 200 fly.

Johnson first cleared the record in a dual meet against Army on October 11 in front of a huge crowd as part of Kyle Sockwell’s dual meet tour. There he swam 1:42.41. Three weeks later, he broke it again with a 1:41.70, which cleared not only the school record but his lifetime best of 1:42.29 from high school.

Then in finals of the 200 fly on Saturday evening, he swam 1:41.56. That time will lock up his first NCAA Championship appearance. For a Minnesota team that had no A-Finalists at last year’s Big Ten Championships, Johnson now has a time that would have been 6th at that meet.

Collegiate Time ProgressionJohnson’s best time would have just-missed scoring at last year’s NCAA Championship meet (1:41.38 made the B-Final). Minnesota hasn’t had an All-American in the 200 fly on the men’s side since Kyler van Swol finished 16th at the 2014 NCAA Championships.