OLYMPIAN swimmer, Chad le Clos wasn’t fast enough to keep his 200m freestyle crown at the world short-course championships in Canada on Wednesday night.
According to reports, Le Clos was last, going into the halfway mark and by 150m he had caught up just one place‚ but then he delivered his trademark kick to touch in 1 min 41.65 sec behind Korean veteran Taehwan Park‚ who won the 400m crown the previous day.
The former Westville swimmer also won silver in this event at the Rio Olympics in Brazil. Le Clos switched his strategy of swimming hard and holding on Wednesday night.
Le Clos was back in the water soon afterwards in the 100m butterfly semi-finals‚ finishing third in the fastest heat of the night behind Briton Adam Barrett and American Tom Shields. Barrett clocked 49.21 ahead of Shields in 49.46 and Le Clos in 49.84.
Le Clos will go into tonight’s final with the advantage‚ owning the world No1 ranking courtesy of the 48.66 he clocked some months back, in the hopes to win his third consecutive world title in this event.