2025 World Championships
- July 27 – August 3, 2025 (pool swimming)
- Singapore, Singapore
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The semi-finals of the men’s 200m backstroke unfolded on day five of the 2025 World Championships, with the races producing some spectacular times.
A total of five national records and one continental record bit the dust, setting us up for a potentially explosive main event tomorrow evening.
Capturing the top seed was the 100m backstroke gold medalist here, Pieter Coetze of South Africa.
One-time Cal commit Coetze stopped the clock at a seriously speedy time of 1:54.22 to lead a foursome of sub-1:55-second swimmers.
Coetze split 26.31/28.74/29.62/29.55 to land lane 4, obliterating his previous South African and African record of 1:55.60 in the process.
That former mark was established en route to the South African placing 7th in the 2back event at the 2024 Olympic Games.
Remarkably, the 21-year-old’s time this evening would have won Olympic gold, beating out champion Hubert Kos of Hungary’s podium-topping effort of 1:54.26 logged in Paris.
Coetze now ranks as the 10th-best performer in history.
Top 10 Men’s LCM 200 Backstroke Performers All-Time
- Aaron Peirsol (USA) – 1:51.92, 2009
- Ryosuke Irie (JPN) – 1:52.51, 2009
- Ryan Lochte (USA) – 1:52.96, 2011
- Mitch Larkin (AUS) – 1:53.17, 2015
- Evgeny Rylov (RUS) – 1:53.23, 2021
- Tyler Clary (USA) – 1:53.41, 2012
- Ryan Murphy (USA) – 1:53.57, 2018
- Xu Jiayu (CHN) – 1:53.99, 2018
- Hubert Kos (HUN) – 1:54.14, 2023
- Pieter Coetze (RSA) – 1:54.22, 2025
Behind Coetze tonight was France’s Yohann Ndoye-Brouard who touched in a big-time PB of 1:54.47.
That represents a new national record, destroying the 1:55.38 Mewen Tomac logged at last summer’s Olympic Games. Like Coetze, this effort is his first-ever foray under the 1:55 barrier, as Ndoye-Brouard’s previous best stood at 1:55.62 from back in 2022.
The 100m backstroke bronze medalist here, Ndoye-Brouard split 26.67/28.91/29.81/29.08 to hold a narrow advantage over Kos who snagged the 3rd seed in 1:54.64, the 4th-best time of the Bob Bowman-trained swimmer’s career.
Capturing the 4th seed this evening was Roman Mityukov of Switzerland, the man who earned bronze in this event in Paris.
Last year at the Games, Mityukov landed on the podium with a time of 1:54.85, whereas here he turned in a time of 1:54.83 to shave .02 off that previous performance to set a new national record.
Additional national records which fell in tonight’s semi-finals included:
- Blake Tierney – New Canadian Record of 1:55.03; sliced .14 off the 1:55.17 he produced in the heats, as that overtook the former national mark of 1:56.74 he logged at the 2024 Canadian Olympic Trials.
- Jan Cejka – New Czech Record of 1:55.46; eclipsed the previous national standard of 1:56.66 Jan Cejka established at the 2021 European Championships.
This was a pretty deep semi finals round. 4 guys bunched up at 1:54 at this point I’m almost expecting someone to go 1:52 here that being Kos hopefully but I wouldn’t mind seeing others going that fast too it’s high and time someone else cracks that top 5 list
Men are on fire at this meet and have much better depth besides a couple misses for the US/CHN.
Believe 1:55.70 is also a South Korean national record as well
Little surprised how few that have been under 1:54 since the world record is 1.51
Wonder if anyone at this meet can challenge Lochte’s textile best of 1.52.96
I honestly thought a 1:54 wasn’t that impressive but looking at the top 10 performers the Piersol wr is really warping my perception of a good 200 back
Ndoye-Brouard was not the french record holder before tonight. It was Mewen Tomac who finished 4th at the Olympics in 1:55.38. I think Kos is the favorite for tomorrow. He had the final of the 200 IM in his legs before the 200 back semi. For silver it will be close between Coetze and Ndoye-Brouard. I don’t know.