Africa: Breaststroke Breakthrough Of African, 7 National Records

2017 FINA WORLD SWIMMING CHAMPIONSHIPS

7 different swimmers from African nations set national records in the men’s 50 breaststroke, part of a massive explosion across the world in that event.

It’s typical for the non-Olympic events to jump forward – after all, they weren’t a major focus for anyone last summer, with no Rio berths or Olympic medals on the line. The return to the World Championships format offers swimmers a chance to essentially use two years worth of improvements to come up with big time drops in one of the sport’s shortest races.

Cameron van der Burgh headlined, making his 2017 World Champs debut after scratching the 100 breast. He set new South African and African records with a 26.54 in heats, then went 26.74 in the semifinals to set up for Africa’s first medal of the 2017 Championships tomorrow night.

Other records fell in Egypt (that nation’s fourth national record of the meet so far), Zimbabwe, Botswana, Tanzania and Uganda.

AFRICAN RECAP

National Records, Day 3

  • African/South African record – Cameron van den Burgh – M 50 breast – 26.54
  • Egyptian record – Youssef El-Kamash – M 50 breast – 27.79
  • Zimbabwean record – James Lawson – M 50 breast – 28.85
  • Angolan record – Mário Ervedosa – M 50 breast – 29.26
  • Botswanan record – Adrian Robinson – M 50 breast – 30.38
  • Tanzanian record – Adhil Bharmal – M 50 breast – 32.67
  • Ugandan record – Tibatemwa Ekirikubinza – M 50 breast – 32.77
  • Tanzanian record – Sonia Tumiotto – W 200 free – 2:11.01

DAY 3 MEDALS/FINALISTS – AFRICA

The two South Africans will be the first African swimmers to final this year and the third and fourth semifinalists, joining yesterday’s semi swimmers Myles Brown and Marwan el-Kamash.

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About Jared Anderson

Jared Anderson

Jared Anderson swam for nearly twenty years. Then, Jared Anderson stopped swimming and started writing about swimming. He's not sick of swimming yet. Swimming might be sick of him, though. Jared was a YMCA and high school swimmer in northern Minnesota, and spent his college years swimming breaststroke and occasionally pretending …

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