Anton Chupkov Sets New World Junior Record in 200 Breaststroke

Russia’s Anton Chupkov, who set the 100m breast World Junior record last year at 1:00.84 which still stands today, has broken the World Junior record in the 200m breast at the 2015 Kazan World Championships. In front of a home crowd during the semifinals, he finished at 2:09.64, which clips the old record of 2:09.75 by Japan’s Ippei Watanabe.

Chupkov’s splits from prelims to finals:

Prelims – 29.93/33.30/32.81/33.93 = 2:09.97

Semis – 29.64/33.07/32.98/33.95 = 2:09.64 WJR

Chupkov likes to really push that third 50 to jut ahead of much of the competition, but it was his first 100 that really made all the difference for him. He was out much faster on both of his first 50s and was able to keep it together, for the most part, on the end.

With that, Chupkov has qualified himself as the 8th and last spot for the 200m breaststroke finals, where he will contest a strong field. It took a sub-2:10 swim to make it to this final, and Chupkov edged out his countrymate Ilya Khomenko to get into this final. The Russian youngster is now the fastest junior swimmer ever in both the 100 and 200 breaststrokes.