Pieter Coetzé takes pole position for Friday's 200m backstroke final
Coetzé, racing on his own out in lane eight after taking the final 16th spot in the morning heats, sped across the eight laps to win his evening semifinal in a 1min 54.22sec African record.
His time would have won gold at the Paris Olympics last year.
Frenchman Yohan Ndoye-Brouard won the other semifinal in 1:54.47, just ahead of Olympic champion Hubert Kos of Hungary in 1:54.64.
Coetzé, who ended seventh in this event at the Paris showpiece, is a racer and he will surely thrive when he's swimming alongside his main rivals.
But it's worth remembering that Kos, who has a 1:54.14 best, could have more gas in the final. An hour and 17 minutes before his backstroke semifinal he competed in the 200m individual medley final, taking bronze behind French superstar Leon Marchand and American Shaine Casas.
Coetzé is bidding to become the second South African to win a 100m-200m world championship double after Chad Le Clos in the butterfly in 2013.
Earlier, Kaylene Corbett advanced to the 200m breaststroke final as she ended fourth in her semifinal in 2:23.81, ranking seventh overall.
Corbett is no stranger to the big time, having swum in the 200m breaststroke finals at the Tokyo and Paris Olympics, as well as the 2019 world championships and even the 2018 and 2022 Commonwealth Games.
But this will be the first time she's competing without her retired training partner, Tatjana Smith. Up front American Olympic champion Kate Douglass (2:20.96) and Russian world record-holder Evgenia Chikunova (2:20.65) are expected to battle it out for gold in Friday's final.
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