The Belgian Swimming Federation has released its 9-swimmer strong roster for the 2016 FINA Short Course World Championships. Whereas the women’s side of the roster remains the same from the 2014 edition of this same meet, there are some shake-ups on the men’s line-up.
Both Kimberly Buys and Fanny Lecluyse remain on the SC World Championships roster, with the former taking on the 100m freestyle and 50m/100m butterfly events. Lecluyse is set to compete across the 50m/100m/200m distances of her specialty, breaststroke, while also adding in the 100m IM.
Short course-wise, Lecluyse is coming off of a successful European Championships, where she scored a 50m breaststroke silver and 200m breaststroke gold in Netanya, both in national record-setting times.
Pieter Timmers, Jasper Aerents and Louis Croenen are 3 swimmers carried over from the 2014 Short Course World Championships roster for Belgium, but Lander Hendrickx, Jonas Coreelman, Thomas Thijs and Lorenz Weiremans are now also representing the nation in Windsor. Hendrickx is pinned to swim the 400m and 1500m freestyles, while Coreelman has the 50m/100m/200m breaststroke races in his domain. Thijs and Weiremans are listed as only members of the 4×200 freestyle relay.
Timmers is the marquee swimmer of the bunch, having clinched a silver medal at the 2016 Olympic Games in the men’s 100m freestyle. He finished behind winner Kyle Chalmers of Australia, but was swift enough to beat out American Nathan Adrian for 2nd place in the race. Most recently prior to Rio, Timmers was a member of his nation’s silver medal-winning 4x200m freestyle and bronze medal-winning 4x100m freestyle relays at the 2016 European Championships in London.
