Swimming

2024 Worlds Previews: Thin Fields Still Leave Fascinating Storylines in Men’s Butterflys

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By Braden Keith on SwimSwam

2024 World Aquatic Championships

In the strangest World Championships in several generations, we’re going to do our best to pick the medalists and finalists for the 2024 World Championships. It’s going to be weird. There are going to be swimmers in finals that most of us have never heard of. We’re going to miss someone obvious who we didn’t expect to race. The list at the top is as valuable as the list at the bottom. Let us know in the comments, and we reserve the right to update picks if y’all inform us of an entry we missed! 

The men’s butterfly events will be among the weakest events at the 2024 World Championships. From last year’s meet finals, only three swimmers return in the 50 fly, two in the 100 fly, and three in the 200 fly.

But that doesn’t mean the field is devoid of good stories, including American Shaine Casas trying to put together a good international meet, Poland’s Krzysztof Chmielewski and Japan’s Tomoru Honda vying for pole position headed toward Paris in the 200 fly with Kristof Milak‘s future uncertain, and a really good field in the men’s 50 fly, in spite of only one swimmer from last year’s top six at Worlds returning.

50 Fly Preview

Returning Semifinalists – 2023 World Championships Absent Semifinalists – 2023 World Championships
2. Diogo Ribeiro, Portugal – 22.80 1. Thomas Ceccon, Italy – 22.68
7. Simon Bucher, Austria – 23.26 3. Maxime Grousset, France – 22.82
8. Abdelrahman Sameh, Egypt – 23.34 4. Jacob Peters, Great Britain – 22.84
8. Dylan Carter, Trinidad & Tobago – 23.05 5. Ben Proud, Great Britain – 22.91
10. Mario Molla, Spain – 23.16 6. Dare Rose, USA – 23.01
10. Szebasztian Szabo, Hungary – 23.16 13. Noe Ponti, Switzerland – 23.26
12. Nyls Korstanje, Netherlands – 23.23 14. Ilya Kharun, Canada – 23.27
16. Josif Miladinov, Bulgaria – 23.40 15. Josh Liendo, Canada – 23.33

Portuguese teenager Diogo Ribeiro, the World Junior Record holder in this event, won his first senior World Championship medal last summer when he took silver in the 50 fly behind Italy’s Thomas Ceccon (who is skipping the meet with a finger injury).

He has to find different events to prioritize in the Olympic year (sprint frees, the 100 fly), but this event is the one that he’s most synonymous with at this point in his young career.

While there aren’t many finalists from last year’s World Championships returning, not far behind Ribeiro is a quartet of really good and really experienced sprinters with a lot of international hardware.

American Michael Andrew is chasing his 50-meter-medal quartet and is the second seed. He didn’t make the US team in 2023, but was the bronze medalist at the World Championships in 2022. He and his coach/dad Peter Andrew have made a training stop in his parents’ native South Africa to prep and fine-tune details ahead of Doha. Andrew has been on a roller-coaster the last few years, though social media posts indicate that maybe there’s a bit of a taper coming for the World Championships – even in the Olympic year – and the stop in South Africa might remove some of the Southern California distractions.

So things seem optimistic for Andrew going into the World Championships. At a minimum, it appears that he’s going for it at this meet, and in the strangest of World Championships, that matters.

Dylan Carter, the 3rd seed, has looked really good over the last 9 months – in the freestyle races. That includes a December best of 21.69 in the 50 free. That’s crucial because of the Olympic year. His 50 fly has been more inconsistent over that time period – he was 22.89 at Worlds prelims, but just 23.05 in the semi-finals before losing a swimoff to miss the final.

And then there’s the co-World Record holder in short course Szebasztian Szabo of Hungary. The 27-year-old was good at the Hungarian Championships last year, swimming 22.93, but at Worlds he swam 23.16 to finished 10th in the semi-finals in an event where the smallest of margins are the difference between a medal and not even racing in the final.

The long course World Record holder Andrii Govorov is also entered. At 31, Govorov is more than five years removed from the 22.28 he swam in 2018 that is the long course World Record in the event. Nobody has been very close to that time since 2019, including him. His best last year was 23.40, and his best in 2022 was 23.18. In this short field, he could still sneak his way into the final, though his times the last couple of years don’t indicate that he’s got a strong chance at medals here.

Don’t sleep on Egyptian Abdelrahman Elaraby either. The Notre Dame 5th-year swimmer has taken international breaks before this season, which included winning the 50 fly at the World Cup stop in Athens in the fall in 23.04. He’s got a tricky balance to strike between his collegiate obligations and this meet, but I would expect that he’ll be winding up at least some rest for this meet.

Two of the more-interesting names in this race are Cam McEvoy of Australia, the defending 50 free World Champion, and Shaine Casas of the USA, who is hyper-talented but has had trouble putting everything together at big meets.

Casas’ best time of 23.31 was done as the split en route to his 50.40 in the 100 fly at US Nationals last year. Casas has sub-23 talent in this race.

McEvoy, on the other hand, has a bit of an odd history with the 50 fly. He won at Australian Trials last year in 23.07, but then went to Worlds and missed the semifinals with a 23.40 in prelims. Given how good he was in the 50 free, that swim was a bit of an odd parallel for him.

The other Australia, Isaac Cooper, has high-speed potential too, and like the aforementioned Andrew, he is laser-focused on the 50 meter races at this meet.

There are some other good young swimmers besides Cooper in this field, including 20-year-old Cameron Gray of Australia, 22-year-old Stergios Bilas of Greece, and 21-year-old Mario Molla Yanes of Spain. Molla Yanes was one of the surprises of the World Championships when he improved from 23.54 to 23.16 to just-miss the final in this event. He had a pretty good meet at the European SC Championships to continue that momentum.

He hasn’t raced the 50 fly in long course since Worlds, but he was part of a crew that raced at the US Open in December and he swam pretty well there. This meet is part of the Spanish Olympic qualifying pathway and Molla Yanes does not yet have an Olympic cut in the 100 fly, so expect him to go full-bore here to book his ticket to the Olympics.

SwimSwam Picks:

Rank Swimmer Country Season Best Career Best
1 Michael Andrew USA 22.79
2 Diogo Ribeiro Portugal 23.36 22.8
3 Shaine Casas USA 23.60* 23.31*
4 Dylan Carter Trinidad & Tobago 23.17 22.85
5 Abdelrahman Elaraby Egypt 23.04 22.94
6 Cam McEvoy Australia 23.4 23.07
7 Mario Molla Yanes Spain N/A 23.16
8 Isaac Cooper Netherlands 23.19 23.19

100 Fly Preview

There is some overlap from the men’s 50 fly to the men’s 100 fly, but not as much as one might expect.

Returning Semifinalists – 2023 World Championships Absent Semifinalists – 2023 World Championships
5. Nyls Korstanje, Netherlands – 51.05 1. Maxime Grousset, France – 50.14
6. Katsuhiro Matsumoto, Japan – 51.20 2. Josh Liendo, Canada – 50.34
13. Diogo Ribeiro, Portugal – 51.54 3. Dare Rose, USA – 50.46
14. Adilbek Mussin, Kazakhstan – 51.81 4. Matthew Temple, Australia – 50.81
14. Josi Miladinov, Bulgaria – 51.81 7. Noe Ponti, Switzerland – 51.23
8. Gal Cohen Groumi, Israel – 51.32
9. Ilya Kharun, Canada – 51.22
10. Kayky Mota, Brazil – 51.43
10. James Guy, Great Britain – 51.43
12. Jacob Peters, Great Britain – 51.51
16. Tomer Frankel, Israel – 52.04

American Shaine Casas should be the top seed though he isn’t. Swimmers are all seeded with times from late 2022 or 2023, and Casas was 50.40 at US Nationals, which would make him the clear top seed in this race.

The top seed, formally, is Dutchman Nyls Korstanje, who swam 50.78 to qualify for the final, ultimately placing 5th at last year’s World Championships.

That’s where I expect this battle for gold to fall.

Korstanje, long known to American swimming fans from his 22-time All-America career at NC State, hada big long course breakthrough last year, improving his best time from 51.41 to 50.78. Most importantly, he swam well at World Championships, including the three best times of his career.

That’s no disrespect to Katsuhiro Matsumoto of Japan, but he’ll be swimming this meet about a month shy of Japan’s Olympic selection meet, so I just don’t expect him to be as honed-in here as he might be otherwise.

The battle for bronze, then, becomes really interesting. There’s Chad 2.0, aka Chad Le Clos, who’s now training in South Africa. So far, his training return to coach Dirk Lange has produced a few good results, including a 51.37 in the 100 fly at the South African National Championships last April. That won’t get an Olympic medal (or probably a final) in 2024, but it should final (and could medal) at the World Championships in Doha.

Austrian Simon Bucher was 51.20 in March 2023, just .02 seconds shy of his 2022 best, but struggled at Worlds with a 52.27. He’s already been 51.87 in 2024 at the Euro Meet, so it doesn’t look like that time from last year’s World Championships was the start of a slide.

Diogo Ribeiro is in there too with the Olympic year pressure to figure the 100 fly out. He was 51.45 at Portuguese Nationals and was close again in 51.54 at Worlds.

Other good names in this field include South African Matthew Sates, who has done well in short course and at World Cups but never really at the senior international level; and American Zach Harting and Japan’s Tomoru Honda, coming down from the 200 fly to the 100 fly.

Ice cold take on Sates: I may be underestimating him here. These meets have sort of a “World Cup” feel to them, where the fields are good, but missing most of the top names, and he excels in World Cups. So maybe he’ll thrive here too?

SwimSwam Picks:

Rank Swimmer Country Season Best Career Best
1 Shaine Casas USA 51.03 50.4
2 Nyls Korstanje Netherlands 51.38 50.78
3 Chad le Clos South Africa 51.79 50.56
4 Katsuhiro Matsumoto Japan N/A 50.96
5 Simon Bucher Austria N/A 51.18
6 Diogo Ribeiro Portugal 53.28 51.45
7 Jakub Majerski Poland 52.28 50.92
8 Josif Miladinov Bulgaria 52.28 50.93

A good darkhorse pick for both of the longer races is Wang Xizhe, China: One of the youngest swimmers in the meet, the 16-year-old Wang gets better as the distances go longer. He is seeded with a 52.87 in the 100 fly and a 1:56.05 in the 200 fly. He won silver in the 100 fly and gold in the 200 fly at the World Aquatics Championships. I think he will final in the 200 fly, but in this 100 he has a chance too.

Men’s 200 Fly Preview

Returning Semifinalists – 2023 World Championships Absent Semifinalists – 2023 World Championships
2. Krzysztof Chmielewski, Poland – 1:53.62 1. Leon Marchand, France – 1:52.43
3. Tomoru Honda, Japan – 1:53.66 4. Thomas Heilman, USA – 1:53.82
7. Richard Marton, Hungary – 1:55.02 4. Ilya Kharun, Canada – 1:53.82
9. Alberto Razzetti, Italy – 1:55.00 6. Carson Foster, USA – 1:54.74
12. Arbidel Gonzalez, Spain – 1:55.61 8. Wang Kuan-hung, Chinese Taipei – 1:55.43
13. Lewis Clareburt, New Zealand – 1:56.44 10. Teppei Morimoto, Japan – 1:55.36
14. Denys Kesil, Ukraine – 1:56.89 11. Noe Ponti, Swizterland – 1:55.44
15. Niu Guangsheng, China – 1:57.51
16. Leonardo de Deus, Brazil – 1:57.94

A very different field, again, from the 100 fly, this one is led by returning World Championship medalists Krzysztof Chmielewski of Poland and Tomoru Honda of Japan.

After winning silver last year, Chmielewski has been training in the US at USC under Olympic gold medalist Lea Maurer. In that limited racing in the US, his yards racing hasn’t really lived up to his meters racing, but given some of his dual meet times, it seems like maybe he’s saving all of his rest for this end-of-season triple with these World Championships, the early-March Pac-12 Championships, and then the NCAA Championships at the end of the month.

He didn’t even swim the 200 fly at the US Open in December, instead just entering the 1500 free (15:18.26).

With USC not fighting for team titles this year (they’re very much in rebuilding mode), I think there’s a good chance that we see this as Chmielewski’s focus meet of the spring, and then doing his best to hold on for NCAAs – remembering that with converted times, he is allowed to qualify for NCAAs via these World Championships.

Honda, on the other hand, has the pressure of an Olympic Trials meet not long after these World Championships. While we don’t have any good indications of how Japan is going to approach this meet, Honda has a pretty substantial margin to the country’s next-best butterflier Teppei Morimoto (1:55.36 at Worlds last year), so that gives him some room to play with.

Krzystof’s twin brother Michal Chmielewski is in the same boat, though he’s a step behind his brother as the 5th seed. He, however, was very good at the US Open, swimming 1:54.88 to improve his best time by a second-and-a-half. Why Krzystof is the more accomplished of the two to this point of their career, Michal is the one who has shown more benefit (so far) from his time training in the US.

One of the good stories of 2023 was that of Hungarian Richard Marton. With his Hungarian countrymate Kristof Milak, the World Record holder in the event, presenting an uncertain future in the sport, Marton carries the torch for the legendary Hungarian 200 butterfliers into Doha.

Marton said he almost quit the sport before the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, but we’re all lucky he didn’t: since those Games, he has dropped more than three seconds in the 200 fly, including a best of 1:54.54 at last year’s World Championships.

Another hard-charger in this race is Martin Espernberger of Austria. He just turned 20 in December and currently trains at the University of Tennessee. So far, his college schedule hasn’t really interfered with his international pursuits: he swam a best time of 1:54.69 at the US Open in December, was a 1:56.58 at the Pro Swim Series in Knoxville, and in November was a 1:55.01 at the Tennessee Invite.

He has swum the four fastest times of his career, all faster than last year’s World Championships, within a two month window, and on top of that knocked more than seven seconds off his short course best in December at the Austrian Championships, swimming 1:54.80.

He’s on one, and while he has the same collegiate concerns as many others in this field, swimming this race fast a lot of times in a short period doesn’t seem to have been a problem for him so far.

But let’s say all of these NCAA guys (three of the top five seeds) are focused on their conference championship meets and stumble a little here. Who’s waiting to take their slots?

Alberto Razzetti is the next guy up based on 2023 best times. He swam a 1:54.98 at Italian Trials and then 1:55.00 at the World Championships. While he’s struggled a bit in the 100 in the last few years, his 200 fly has continued to progress alongside his IMs (he was 1:56.2/4:09 in the IM races in November in Riccione).

Then there’s the 21-year-old Spaniard Arbidel Gonzalez, who is not training under Ben Titley (as far as we can tell), but who is still catching a wave of momentum that has hit since his arrival.

Last summer at Worlds, he went a best time of 1:54.99, which was almost two seconds better than his best coming into the meet. Spanish swimmers can qualify for the Olympics via this World Championships, so expect him to be locked-in here.

There are a few other former NCAA swimmers in this field as well, who don’t currently have those pressures anymore. That includes American Zach Harting, Italian Federico Burdisso, and South African Matthew Sates.

SwimSwam Predictions:

Rank Swimmer Country Season Best Career Best
1 Krzysztof Chmielewski Poland N/A 1:53.62
2 Tomoru Honda Japan 1:53.99 1:52.70
3 Martin Espernberger Austria 1:54.69 1:54.69
4 Alberto Razzetti Italy N/A 1:54.98
5 Michal Chmielewski Poland 1:54.88 1:54.88
6 Richard Marton Hungary 1:57.09 1:54.54
7 Wang Xizhe China 1:56.05 1:56.05
8 Arbidel Gonzalez Spain 1:59.02 1:54.99

 

SwimSwam: 2024 Worlds Previews: Thin Fields Still Leave Fascinating Storylines in Men’s Butterflys

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