Le Clos floats like a butterfly in Monaco

CHAD le Clos will have taken some heart from his display in the 200m butterfly on the opening day of the Mare Nostrum series in Monte Carlo last night.

He was in control throughout as he won in 1min 54.80sec, faster than the 1:55.04 he clocked at the SA championships in Durban in April. It was two-hundredths of a second too slow to push the already fifth-ranked fly ace higher up the world rankings.

The swimmers are still in hard training and good times are tough to come by, but even so, there wasn’t much to enthuse about in the men’s 100m freestyle.

SA needs one fast freestyler who can take the 4x100m medley relay home at the Rio Olympics.

If Christopher Reid (backstroke), Cameron van der Burgh (breaststroke) and Le Clos (fly) are in top form in their legs, the freestyler will dive in with the prospect of securing a medal. Or blowing it.

Myles Brown, fifth overall, was the quickest of SA’s three freestylers in the 100m freestyle final, clocking 49.59sec to beat sixth-placed Doug Erasmus (50.63) and seventh-placed Calvyn Justus (50.76).

The race was won by Russia’s Andrey Grechin in 49.03.

Le Clos, who is considering doing the 100m freestyle at the Games in August, went 49.52 in the morning heats before withdrawing from last night’s final.

Brown powered through over the second half of the 400m freestyle to win in 3:49.96, which was more than a second slower than his 3:48.86 at the SA championships.

Peter Bernek of Hungary, the bronze medallist at the recent European championships, took the early lead but disappeared to the back of the field, finishing last in 3:56.43.

Jarred Crous was second in the men’s 200m breaststroke in 2:11.67 behind German Marco Koch, the fastest man in this event so far this year. Crous was within split-seconds of his time at the nationals.

Van der Burgh missed out on a spot in the final by one position after he slowed dramatically over the final length, but he won the non-Olympic 50m breaststroke in 27.30.

Erasmus later shared third place in the 50m freestyle in 22.59.