Schooling and Conger, Side-by-Side, Swim 2 Fastest 200 Flys in History

2016 MEN’S NCAA CHAMPIONSHIPS

Swimming side-by-side, center-pool, in the final swimming individual event of the 2016 NCAA Men’s Swimming & Diving Championships, which will be a meet for the record books, Texas teammates Joseph Schooling and Jack Conger swam to the fastest and second-fastest times in the history of the 200 yard fly.

Schooling swam a 1:37.97, which breaks the old NCAA Record, the old U.S. Open Record, and is the fastest time in history. Conger, meanwhile, led for 150 yards by half-a-second, and eventually wound up 2nd in 1:38.06 to break his own American Record. Schooling is from Singapore and thus ineligible for the American Record.

The two swims were both more than a second ahead of anyone else in history. Coming into the meet, Conger was the fastest swimmer in the history of the event with a 1:39.31 done in a time trial at last year’s Big 12 Championships (until this year, NCAA Records couldn’t be done in time trial swims).

Comparative Split:

  • Schooling NCAA ’16: 23.05/24.48/25.01/25.43 = 1:37.97 (New USO/NCAA Records)
  • Conger NCAA ’16: 22.05/24.83/25.04/26.14 = 1:38.06 (New American Record)
  • Conger Big 12 ’15: 22.09/25.23/25.34/26.65 = 1:39.31
  • Bosch NCAA ’14: 22.65/24.63/25.47/26.58 (old USO/NCAA Records)

The astonishing thing about the swims is that Conger was out on the same pace as he was at Big 12s last year, but with another year of training for this event, a relatively-new one for the high school backstroker and freestyler, his endurance has made a big jump.

It still wasn’t enough of an endurance jump, however, to hold off the true 200 butterflier Schooling, who split 25.43 coming home to make up the remainder of a full-second gap opened by Conger in the first 50.

The third-place finisher, Cal freshman Andrew Seliskar, swam 1:39.95. That makes him the 6th man in history under 1:40 (Michael Phelps and Tom Shields are the other two not yet mentioned), and it’s the 10th-best performance in history. Bosch, a former NCAA Champion and record-holder in the event, was 6th in 1:41.11.

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bobo gigi
8 years ago

Monster swims by both Texas guys! Another historical race.
And as usual Conger loses the race in the last 25 yards and as usual Schooling touches the wall first with a few hundredths ahead of Conger who’s gonna start to seriously cogitate.
Amazing to think Conger is still without any individual title.

NCAAs 2015
100 fly. 1. Schooling 44.51 2. Conger 44.55
200 fly. 1. Schooling 1.39.62 2. Conger 1.39.74
NCAAs 2016
200 fly. 1. Schooling 1.37.97 2. Conger 1.38.06

What I have to do? I destroy the American record by a huge margin and I’m still beaten! 😥
Very boring to lose all those close races. I don’t want to look like Cavic! 😡

Swimswammy
Reply to  bobo gigi
7 years ago

Conger’s closing the gap only .08 behind Schooling this year.

PsychoDad
8 years ago

John Murry and Jack Conger led team cheer after the celebratory team swim. So, no matter how sad Jack felt after losing in 200 fly, he was happy and pumped up for the team success. Jack Conger is a great team leader as his relays swims show as well.

Cynthia mae Curran
8 years ago

Fast flies.

keendog
8 years ago

Correction: Conger was 1:38.06, not 1:37.97.

He looked quite upset after the fly – hope he can get it together for the relay so we can see a great race with NC State.

Joel Lin
8 years ago

Imagine being a Georgia Tech swimmer and looking up at the pool records after this weekend.

Wow.

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Braden Keith

Braden Keith is the Editor-in-Chief and a co-founder/co-owner of SwimSwam.com. He first got his feet wet by building The Swimmers' Circle beginning in January 2010, and now comes to SwimSwam to use that experience and help build a new leader in the sport of swimming. Aside from his life on the InterWet, …

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