2024 ROMANIAN NATIONALS
- Wednesday, April 17th – Sunday, April 21st
- Otopeni, Romania
- LCM (50m)
- Start List
- Results
Day 2 of the 2024 Romanian Nationals saw former world record holder David Popovici dive in to contest the men’s 200m freestyle.
After posting the top time of the morning in 1:47.41 as the sole swimmer of the field under 1:52, 19-year-old Popovici produced a final mark of 1:45.10 to grab the gold this evening.
Popovici split 24.98/26.97(51.95)/26.92/26.24(53.16) to keep things relatively close between his two halves in this controlled outing.
His performance handily defeated the domestic field, with Mihai Gergely snagging silver in 1:51.27 and Robert Andrei Badea bagging bronze in 1:51.86.
Popovici’s 1:45.10 checks in as a season-best, overtaking the 1:46.19 logged at the Luxembourg Euro Meet in January. He bumps himself up in the world rankings to now occupy slot #7.
2023-2024 LCM Men 200 Free
POPOVICI
1:43.13
| 2 | Lukas MÄRTENS | GER | 1:44.14 | 04/27 |
| 3 | Sunwoo HWANG | KOR | 1:44.40 | 09/27 |
| 4 | Matthew RICHARDS | GBR | 1:44.69 | 04/07 |
| 5 | Duncan SCOTT | GBR | 1:44.75 | 04/07 |
| 6 | Maximillian GIULIANI | AUS | 1:44.79 | 12/12 |
| 6 | Luke HOBSON | USA | 1:44.79 | 07/29 |
| 8 | Danas RAPSYS | LTU | 1:44.96 | 02/12 |
| 9 | James GUY | GBR | 1:45.04 | 07/30 |
| 10 | Thomas DEAN | GBR | 1:45.09 | 04/07 |
Popovici’s lifetime best in this 200m free remains at the massive 1:42.97 he produced en route to gold at the 2022 European Championships. That performance rendered him the 3rd-fastest man in history, sitting only behind Germany’s retired world record holder Paul Biedermann‘s supersuited time of 1:42.00 and retired Olympic champion Michael Phelps (1:42.96) of the United States.
The Romanian added this 2free gold to the 50m free meet title he captured on day 1 here in Otopeni. Yesterday he posted a result of 22.27 to register the 4th-quickest time of his young career. His PB remains at the 22.16 produced for gold at the 2022 European Junior Championships.
The other notable swim on the evening came in the men’s 50m fly where Denis Laurean Popescu fired off a new national record.
He popped a time of 23.54 to slice .20 off of Popovici’s former national standard of 23.74 put on the books at the 2023 edition of this competition.
Entering this meet, Popescu’s lifetime best rested at the 24.13 notched at the 2023 Sette Colli Trophy. That means the 20-year-old beat his previous PB by over half a second en route to grabbing the gold.
3:47.54 in the 400 just now
On par with his best times / 2022 euros
Looks like maybe a PB actually? He had 3:47:99 then.
I see pecs that weren’t there last year. The kid is getting beefier.
article says he came back in 52.44… (obv he did not, it was a 53.15)
but i am intrigued, how can you get it that wrong tho? none of the splits would add up to that number
i really hope they just copy+pasted the wrong number from the results or sum bc if that was the product of someones mental arithmetics theres not much hope for them lol
While I would love to see Popovici back at his best, there is one cautionary element to this story and that is that he would have swam this race in very flat water. His closest rival was over 6 seconds back.
He has traditionally swam significantly better in a flat water scenario than a wavey pool, especially with big swimmers going out hard in the first 100, and him trying to back end races and struggling to swim through their waves.
What’s interesting is that a lot of world’s top 200 swimmers are now generally on the smaller side, so the waves might not be such a big issue.
The only scenario where a fully fit Popovici doesn’t win the… Read more »
that’s only been an issue in the 100. he did PBs in the tokyo and budapest finals for the 200
Don’t think that matters too much in the 200.
Hobson or one of the Brits or Max Giuliani perhaps might break through and go a 1:43 mid to high, so Popovici will have to be on his game.
It might be difficult logistically for Popovici to break a WR in Paris if he does not lead off a relay. The most likely place would be in the 200free finals where he might find clean water over the back half like he did at 2022 Euros when he went sub 1:43, or possibly in the 100free heats if he decides to go for it.
WYD!
Daddy Chlorine is back!
Team GB:
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