AMERICAN MANUEL BEATS WORLD-RECORD HOLDER SJOSTROM IN 100-METRE FREESTYLE
imone Manuel felt the pressure of being an Olympic champion. It sure didn’t bother her at the world championships. The 20-year-old Texan backed up her historic victory in Rio de Janeiro by rallying to beat Sweden’s world-record holder Sarah Sjostrom in the 100-metre freestyle yesterday.
“It’s kind of been ingrained in me,” said Manuel, who edged Sjostrom on the final stroke. “I want to win, and I’ve been training to do that this whole time.”
Last summer, Manuel became the first African-American woman to win an individual swimming gold at the Olympics when she tied Canada’s Penny Oleksiak for the top spot on the podium. “It was a lot of pressure knowing that I was the Olympic gold medalist in that event,” Manuel said. “I had a lot of nerves.”
Another US Olympic champion came up short in his bid for an individual gold in Budapest. Ryan Murphy settled for silver in the 200m backstroke behind Russia’s Evgeny Rylov, while another American, Jacob Pebley, took the bronze.
Murphy swept the backstroke events last summer in Rio , but he hasn’t been quite as sharp in Budapest. He took bronze in the 100 and simply couldn’t catch Rylov in the longer event, the Russian finishing in 1 minute, 53.61 seconds to beat Murphy by a comfortable 0.60 seconds.
“There’s definitely disappointment,” Murphy said. “I’m a competitor. I want to be the guy that’s finishing first, and I want to be the guy that has the top time in the world. So it definitely stings a little bit, coming out of this meet and not having done that in either race. But it’s a long way to 2020 and I just want to progress every year and make sure I’m at the top in 2020.”
Russian strike gold
It was a huge night for the Russians, who captured two other individual golds.
Yulia Efimova bested American rival Lilly King in the women’s 200m breaststroke, easing a bit of the sting from two silvers in Rio and another loss to King in the 100m breaststroke at Budapest .
In the men’s 200m breaststroke, Anton Chupkov held off a pair of Japanese swimmers to claim the world title. Yasuhiro Koseki and Ippei Watanabe took the silver and bronze.
Efimova pulled away on the final lap to win by more than two seconds over another American, Bethany Galat. China’s Shi Jinglin grabbed the bronze over a fading King, who slipped to fourth after setting a blistering pace early in the race as she always does.
But King is a 100m specialist and still struggling to master the longer race. There was no holding off Efimova, whose winning time was 2:19.64.
“Efimova wouldn’t stop, unfortunately,” Galat quipped.
Unlike King, who has a frosty relationship with Efimova over blunt comments about the Russian’s past doping violations, Galat went over to give the winner a hug.
Sjostrom, who set a world record in the 100m freestyle earlier in the meet while swimming the leadoff leg of the 4x100m relay, jumped out to a quick lead and was under her own record pace when she made the flip.
Manuel was lagging in third but her wind-milling stroke got stronger and stronger on the return lap. Hugging the lane rope to gain some drafting help, she steadily closed the gap and lunged for the wall just ahead of Sjostrom.
Manuel touched in 52.27 edging the Swedish star by just four-hundredths of a second.
Pernille Blume of Denmark picked up the bronze.
Manuel picked up her third gold of this meet, having also competed on a pair of winning relay teams. “It felt pretty good,” she said. “I think I still have room for improvement, which is really exciting.”