Newly crowned world 100m backstroke champion Pieter Coetzé scraped into Thursday evening’s 200m backstroke semifinals by the narrowest of margins to keep his dreams of winning two or even three medals alive.
Coetzé ended sixth in his morning heat in 1 min 57.11 sec to clinch the final 16th semifinal spot, just four-100ths of a second quicker than Olympic 100m backstroke champion Thomas Ceccon of Italian, making a rare tilt at the eight-lap race.
At the front of the field was Canadian Blake Tierney in 1:55.17, but safely tucked in the bunch were two of the medallists from the 2024 Games in Paris — Hungary’s champion Hubert Kos (1:56.71) and Roman Mityukov of Switzerland (1:56.15).
And it wasn’t as if Coetzé was taking it particularly easy — at the Olympics he was the third fastest in the heats in 1:56.92 and his time on Thursday would have been seventh quickest in France. The 16th-quickest semifinal qualifier then went 1:57.98.
The standard of backstroke racing has gone up in a year.
The 21-year-old Tuks psychology student, who set his 1:55.60 African record finishing seventh in the final in Paris, will need to speed up considerably to win a spot in Friday’s final.
Coetzé, who is scheduled to compete in the 50m backstroke heats on Saturday, wore the cap of his Tuks training partner Kaylene Corbett, the two-time Olympic finalist who finished third in her 200m breaststroke heat on Thursday morning.
She clocked 2:25.10 to advance to the evening semifinals as the seventh-fastest qualifier.
But compatriot Rebecca Meder, racing in the lane next to her, ended sixth in 2:28.40 to rank 24th overall, unable to recover in time from a stomach bug. She was well outside the 2:23.61 she swam to claim the national title in April.
Erin Gallagher won her 100m freestyle heat in 55.01, but it wasn’t enough to book her spot in the evening session, ranking her 27th overall.
The slowest qualifying swim was 54.38, a time the owner of the 54.23 South African record hasn’t achieved since 2019.
The South African women’s 4x200m freestyle team of Aimee Canny, Georgia Nel, Hannah Robertson and Catherine van Rensburg ended 10th in the only heat of the morning in 8:13.06. They would have needed to break the 8:01.56 national mark by nearly three second to make the final.
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