All 8 Men’s 100 Free Finalists Faster Than 2016 World Winning Time

2018 FINA SHORT COURSE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS

• Tuesday, December 11th – Sunday, December 16th
• Hangzhou, China
• Tennis Centre, Hangzhou Olympic & International Expo Center
• SCM (25m)
• Prelims: 9:30 am local, 8:30 pm ET / Finals: 7:00 pm* local, 6:00* am ET
• *The final night of finals will be one hour earlier, starting at 6:00 pm local and 5:00 am ET
• Live Results (Omega)

The depth in the men’s sprint freestyles, specifically the 100, were simply on another level at the 2018 Short Course World Championships.

After both the American and Russian men went under the world record on day 1 in the 400 free relay, erasing the super-suited mark from 2009, the meet was capped off with an insanely fast individual final where all eight men went faster than what it took to win the world title in 2016.

In Windsor, Simonas Bilis won the gold medal in a time of 46.58, edging out Japan’s Shinri Shioura (46.59) and Australian Tommaso D’Orsogna (46.70).

Here in Hangzhou, Caeleb Dressel won gold in a new American Record of 45.62, beating out Russian Vlad Morozov (45.64). Chad Le Clos (45.89) and Vladislav Grinev (45.92) also went under 46 seconds, and then the rest of the field was also under Bilis’ 46.58 from 2016.

Bilis himself took 5th in a new Lithuanian Record of 46.11, and then Mehdy Metella (46.51) was 6th, and Katsumi Nakamura and Blake Pieroni tied for 7th in 46.57.

The top-5 finishers in the race all rank in the top-25 historically in the event. Two more swimmers who weren’t even entered in the individual event in Ryan Held (45.82) and Evgeny Rylov (46.09) also swam times on the lead-off of the 400 free relay (both in prelims) that rank 18th and 24th historically.