A nearly full field rides the wave of excitement in the men’s 400m free

2024 World Aquatics Championships

• February 11th to February 18th (pool swimming)
• doha, qatar
• LCM (50m)
• meet central

In the strangest World Championship in generations, we will do our best to select the medalists and finalists for the 2024 World Championship. It’s going to be weird. The finals will feature players most of us have never heard of. We’re going to miss out on someone who obviously wasn’t expecting to be in the race. The list at the top is just as valuable as the list at the bottom. Let us know in the comments section. We reserve the right to update our recommendations if you let us know about any missed entries. Thanks to my SwimSwam reader, Troy, for helping me sort out entries while the official psycho sheet hasn’t been released yet.

Men’s middle-distance freestyle will be one of the most complete events at the 2024 World Championships, which in theory should negate concerns that there won’t be a good race at this year’s event.

That’s especially true in the 400m free, which is entered by all finalists from last year’s world championships, except for world champion Samuel Short of Australia. In fact, only #1 Samuel Short and #9 Kieran Smith did not enter this race from the top 16 from the previous World Championship, with several bonus entries including Bulgaria’s Petar Mitsin. but, Daniel Wiffen Adding depth to the event are David Johnston from Ireland and David Johnston from the United States.

Men’s 200 free

It’s the slightly smaller of the two middle-distance fields in this preview, and the top two horses from last year’s World Championships are participating in this event, but not in the race.

The main purpose for Britons Matt Richards and Tom Dean to compete is to get Great Britain a qualifying time for the 400 free relay, so they will be racing in Doha but will not be swimming in this race. .

But that doesn’t mean Britain won’t be represented in Doha. duncan scott You can get 200 pieces for free. He has not competed in this event at the long course world championships since winning silver in this event at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. However, he still recorded the top relay time of 1 minute 45.42 seconds at the Fukuoka Games, making him a big threat for a medal in this event this year.

Scott was credited with scoring 41.7 points in the 100-yard free swim at Northern Arizona University’s high altitude training last week. Altitude is not acknowledged to have a significant effect on the 100-yard freestroke, but in the past we have seen swimmers come down from high altitudes and achieve great results. If he rides that wave, the money is his.

Generally speaking, the top end of this field is very young.

• 20 year old Korean Hwang Sun Woowon the bronze medal at last year’s World Championships.
• 20 year old american luke hobsonwas 5th in 1:45.09.
• 19 year old Chinese Pan ZanreAlthough he was only 10th at the World Championships, he set the best time at the Asian Games, winning the silver medal with a time of 1 minute 45.28 seconds (second only to Huang’s 1 minute 44.40 seconds).
• 22 year old german Lucas Martensscratched in the individual 200 free, but swam the leadoff leg of his home country’s 800 free relay in 1:44.79.

In fact, last year five athletes in this field ran under 1 minute 45 seconds.In addition to the above four, 2019 World Championship silver medalist Katsuhiro Matsumoto A 26-year-old from Japan has also entered. She swam 1:44.98 last season.

Most recently, at the 2019 World Championships, he won the gold medal with a time of 1:44.93 (Sun Yang). Now, even at the shorthanded world championships, you might not be able to get on the podium with that time.

There are many established names in this field.In addition to the above, Lithuania’s Danas Lapsisthe best time is 1:44.38, but it hasn’t been better than 1:45.69 since the Olympics, and Austria’s felix oboecHe primarily trains in Loughborough, England, but occasionally makes stops in the United States, where he was recently engaged to American swimmer Katie DeRoof. Oboek ran 1:46.70 at the Knoxville Pro Swim two weeks ago.

But if they do advance, who will be the risers who can take advantage of the gap here and advance to the finals?

Lee Ho Jun South Korea is one of them. He set an Asian record for Korea at the Asian Games with a split of 1 minute 45.36 seconds in the 800-meter free relay (and fans noted that it wasn’t even the fastest split in that relay, compared to Kim Woo-min). In this competition, he swam 400/800 meters). If Lee can achieve a split in the mid-1:44 range at the Olympics, there is a possibility that Korea could win the gold medal, so there is some pressure on Lee.

There is also that Kai Taylor At last year’s World Championships, she missed out on advancing to the semi-finals after swimming a time of 1 minute 46.94 seconds in the preliminaries, but she showed a much better swim in the final, leading the Australian team with a time of 1 minute 45.79 seconds.

There are many athletes aiming to break into the 1:46 range. Denis LoktevIsrael, the only male athlete to take part in the event, dropped half a second last year with a time of 1:46.17. Lucas HenvoeHe played golf until a few years ago and had a huge ceiling, dropping by 2 seconds in 2023. He already ran a 1:47.84 at the Knoxville Pro Swim, and racing for Belgium won’t have as much selection pressure as other swimmers. In this field, we can afford to use more taper in this match.

Australian Elijah Winnington 2023 wasn’t a great year (his best time of the calendar year was 1:46.36 at the Queensland Championships), but he still clocked 1:45.5.

As deep as I love someone Nandor Nemeth The Hungarian made a breakthrough in the 100 free last year, but the 200 free was probably a mess.

This is a really good field, but it’s not easy to choose. If Pan did not intend to swim fast, it is likely that he would not have planned to participate in this event, as many of China’s top athletes are absent. At his best, he’s the best 200 freestyler in the field, although Phan has had some consistency issues. Scott looks hungry and ready to do damage, but he has tough national qualifications to worry about right after the World Championships.

Hobson, an American, has a four-month advantage before worrying about national selection, but although his 1:49.5 in Knoxville was not exactly impressive, he has a record of significant tapering in a short period of time. (17 days before his 1:45.12 in the U.S. trials to join the team, he ran a 1:50.16 in the 200 free at a local meet).

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Men’s 400 free

I’m not going to lie – for most of my career at SwimSwam, nothing exciting happened in the men’s 400 free. For years, no one had come within a second of Paul Biedermann’s world record, or for that matter Ian Thorpe’s textile suit record. Sun Yang was within a tenth of that in 2012, but his career was marred by anti-doping shenanigans that limited his excitement.

However, 400 are free returnand that excitement is captured by the depth of this field.

All finalists except world champion Sam Short returned from last year. There are some new names in the mix, making this one of his deepest races.

The odds-on favorite is Ahmed Hafnaouiwas 0.02 seconds away from winning the historic 400-800-1500 triple at the World Championships last year. Hafnoy was training at Indiana University for the world championships, but has since left that program to train with Mark Schubert on the swim team and doesn’t appear to be returning anytime soon.

It’s unclear what California vs. Hafnaoui will be like, considering he hasn’t played in a game since transferring after October’s tri-tournament between Indiana, Missouri and Auburn. He competed in the US Open but was injured due to illness.

Other than that, on paper he’s the best in this field. Historically, Mark Schubert doesn’t seem to be an athlete who will go full taper as the Olympics approach, but Haffnoy also doesn’t have to worry about the selection process since there are virtually no domestic competitions in this event. do not have.

Two men close to him in this field are from Australia. Elijah Winnington, who clocked a time of 3:41.22 at the 2022 World Championships, the seventh best time of all time, compared to just 4:34.48 last year.and german Lucas MartensHe similarly peaked at 3:41.60 in 2022, but slowed to 3:42.20 in 2023.

Haffnoy’s rest is unclear, but I’m pretty confident Winnington won’t be a full taper. Martens, on the other hand, has been very fast in the middle of the season so far (sometimes to the detriment of his championship run).

But for now I think I prefer Hafnowi (if he races) and Maertens to the unrested Winnington. Winnington ran 3:44.4 in Queensland in December, but Martens hasn’t raced since the World Championships (could this be a red flag?).

Then there are big jams in the 3:43-3:44 range, including one in Brazil. Guilherme Costa, he did not make much of an impression in the first leg of the Brazilian Olympic trials in October (3 minutes 48 seconds) and at the Pan American Games (3 minutes 46 seconds). He probably has some work to do heading into the Olympics, at least to solidify his spot in this 400 free.

Kim Woo Min is another piece of South Korea’s middle-distance puzzle, and the 22-year-old, like Hafunui, Short, Winnington, and Martens, is at what seems to be the prime age for the sport these days. Although he won’t be swimming the 200 free, he could finish second in his country in that race, so just focus on the 400 and 800 individual events and that will help his chances here. It should be.

together with austria felix oboec and swiss antonio jakovicthere was a clear jump from finalists to non-finalists at last year’s World Championships, as more athletes did not swim their best times last season. Christoph LazowskiFor example, was 10th in 3:46.5, more than two seconds slower than Oboek’s time in the final.

However, at this year’s competition, there were several athletes who were unable to swim at last year’s world championships, but who ran times in the 3:44 to 3:45 range.

This group is more interesting in many ways than the group of Backend A finalists mentioned above, considering age, momentum, etc.

I think we’ll see at least half of these players in the finals.

The same goes for Wiffen, who has broken the world record in the 1500m free (short course) since April, and improved his time by 3 seconds to record a time of 3:35.47 in the 400m free (also short course), currently the all-time best. It is ranked 13th. He doesn’t seem to suffer from running fast (or the fear of trying) multiple times a year, so I’m hoping for a medal at this event.

Also, among them, david johnstonran a 3:48 at the world championships, then ran a 3:45.75 at the U.S. championships in July. Marco de TullioAt last year’s World Championships, he ran a time of 3 minutes 44.69 seconds, but in Fukuoka his time was just 3 minutes 47 seconds. Johnston is part of the same TST/Mark Schubert training group as Haffnoy.

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