Latest news with #Pieter Coetzé
The Herald
31-07-2025
- Sport
- The Herald
Chris Smith shows his potential as he ends sixth in 50m breaststroke final
Chris Smith did everything asked of him as he finished sixth in a personal best time in the 50m breaststroke final at the world championships in Singapore on Wednesday night. At 19 he was the youngest in the field, but Smith touched in 26.75sec — one-100th of a second behind fifth-placed German Melvin Imoudu and two-100ths behind Russian Ivan Kozhakin. The Centurion-based Smith would have needed to go 26.67 to share bronze with 100m breaststroke champion Haiyang Qin of China. To put that into perspective, Qin's time equalled the sixth-fastest effort by South Africa's former two-time world champion and multiple record-holder Cameron van der Burgh. Then factor in how much room for improvement there is in Smith's underwater work after the dive and it's clear he has huge potential and should be given full support in the build-up to the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. There are comforting similarities to freshly-minted 100m backstroke world champion Pieter Coetzé, who also had to work on his underwater technique and possesses great natural speed on top of the water.
The Herald
29-07-2025
- Sport
- The Herald
Pieter Coetzé earns podium seeding after tight 100m backstroke semifinals
Pieter Coetzé bagged the third seeding position in Tuesday's 100m backstroke final at the world championships in Singapore after a pair of hard-fought semifinals on Monday night. The South African, who set a 51.99 sec world lead at the World Student Games in Germany just more than a week ago, touched second in the second heat in 52.29, behind Hungarian Hubert Kos, the Olympic champion in the 200m backstroke, in 52.21. Russian Kliment Kolesnikov won the first semifinal in 52.26, just nine-hundredths of a second ahead of the Olympic champion in this event, Italy's Thomas Ceccon, also owner of the 51.60 world record, who kept enough in reserve to clinch bronze in the 50m butterfly half an hour later. 'I just wanted to make it back for the final and I was happy with the time and the swim. And to get second in the semis is a good result,' said Coetzé, who is racing against Russian competitors, competing under the neutral banner, for the first time. 'I knew it was going to be fast ... I've swum with most of these guys, but the Russians are new to me. I haven't swum against them and they're also really fast, but I don't really focus on the people I'm racing against. I just focus on what I need to do.' Just 0.36 sec — or the blink of an eye — separated the eight fastest swimmers, who included Oliver Morgan of Britain (52.41), Apostolos Chrisou of Greece (52.44), Frenchman Yohann Ndoye-Brouard (52.47) and Russia's Miron Lifintsev (52.57).
