Le Clos turns 200 fly upside down with help from Phelps
South African Chad le Clos backed up his Olympic 200m butterfly title with a first world championship gold medal in Barcelona on Wednesday thanks to a storming last 50m that saw him pull away from Poland’s Pawel Korzeniowski.
The 28-year-old Korzeniowski looked set to reclaim the title he won seven years ago in Montreal as he turned for home in front, but le Clos reclaimed the lead with a rapid underwater burst and hung on to win in a time of 1 min, 54.32 sec.
And le Clos admitted afterwards that it was after watching Michael Phelps’ remarkable eight gold medal haul at the Beijing Olympics that he realized just how important his underwater stretches could be.
“Phelps was the one that taught me underwaters,” said the 21-year-old who beat his hero by four hundredths of a second to take the gold in London last year.
“Watching him in Beijing destroy people off the turns made me realize just how important that is.
“The first time I really used it to my advantage was in 2010 for the world short course championships. I practiced my underwaters every day for a year before that and it has now just become part of my training.”
Le Clos could even afford the luxury of looking across at his competitors several times in the final few meters as he closed in on victory, but he admitted he hadn’t been quite as calm as it seemed.
“I could see the cameraman following lane eight and I thought they were winning. I was scared I was in second,” he said with a relieved smile.
“Looking across is something I’ve done my whole life, especially in the butterfly, and my coach always used to shout at me for it.
“I even did it at the Olympics last year as I looked underwater at Michael in the last 50m, but you guys didn’t see that because you were concentrating on Michael.”
Le Clos’ victory capped a great night for South Africa as Cameron van der Burgh and Giulio Zorzi took gold and bronze respectively in the men’s 50m breaststroke.
There were fears earlier in the year that the likes of le Clos and van der Burgh would have to foot their own bill to compete in Barcelona due to a lack of funding and Olympic 100m breaststroke champion van der Burgh hopes the sport’s administrators in the country use their success to bring in more funding.
“Since the Olympics we have brought on a new generation of South African swimming. With more medals also comes more pressure as the expectation is there that we’ll just keep getting more and more, but pressure is also a priviledge,” van der Burgh said.