Kevin Cordes put up some fast swims that rank him within the top 15 globally in his respective events at the Singaporean National Championships this weekend.
The meet stands as Cordes’ first major competition since his big move to Singapore. In late May he said that he would be moving to Singapore in order to continue his training under former Bolles Swim School coach Sergio Lopez. Lopez took up the position as the head coach of the national training center over in Singapore, and has been dedicated to growing the team whilst there.
It seems as though Cordes is flourishing in the environment there, knocking out extremely fast times at the competition in both the 50 and 100m breaststrokes. In the 50, Cordes was a 27.66 in prelims prior to swimming a 27.54 in finals. That time ranks him 15th in the world.
That’s the fastest Cordes has been in the event all season. He swam it once before at the Mel Zajac International in Vancouver, putting together a 28.57 performance to win gold.
Cordes was just as successful in the 100m breaststroke at the Singaporean National Championships, throwing down a season-best time of 1:00.27 in finals. That time ties him as the 14th fastest swimmer in the world this year. Prior to that swim, Cordes wasn’t even in the top 25 globally with a season-best of 1:02.42 from the Mel Zajac International.
This is Cordes’ first big long-course swim since wrapping up his collegiate career with the University of Arizona. The 2013 NCAA Swimmer of the year said goodbye to collegiate competition as a six-time NCAA champion.
The move to Singapore marked his first big move as a professional athlete. He’ll be training there heading into his preparation for the 2015 World Championships.
Cordes will be representing the United States at Worlds in Kazan, Russia this summer. There, he’ll be swimming the 50 and 200m breaststroke events.
Obviously we’ve gotta assume he was somewhat rested for this. Still, very close to a lifetime best. If he gets a shot to swim the 100 on a prelim relay at Worlds, we might see some fireworks. Any word on whether he swam the 200m at this meet?
The 200m race was on Sunday. He swam a 2:11.97
Come on Kevin , put up some deep training and in August , u are around 59.4 .
Good on Kevin. But can’t give Sergio much credit, since he was gone most of this time at the Games. Whoever took workouts while Sergio was gone did a nice job!
Cordes stayed in Vancouver post Mel Zajac Meet and trained with Jozsef Nagy before heading to Singapore. Kudos to Nagy!
Promising
Good on him! Now gotta continue those fast swims! Great looking ahead to breaststroke competiton for that big relay spot this world champs!