Cape Town - The Midas touch deserted South Africa’s Cameron van der Burgh and Chad lo Clos at a time when gold glory beckoned in Wednesday evening’s finals at the 16th FINA World Championships in Kazan, Russia.
In both cases, fractions of a second separated the gold from the silver medallists after they reached out to touch the wall at the finish.
Van der Burgh was upstaged by Britain’s Adam Peaty in the 100m breaststroke final in a time of 26.51 seconds. The South African finished 0.15 back on 26.66.
In the process, the Brit completed the double of world breaststroke titles after his 50m conquest on Tuesday.
“It was just a race to touch the wall first and thankfully it was my day. I got the world record yesterday (Tuesday) and secured the title today – I couldn’t really ask for more,” said Peaty. “That was really good. I missed a couple of strokes, but I just stayed on top of the water.”
Van der Burgh was graceful in defeat.
“It’s just nice to be consistent and always up with the best in the world. I am very honoured and privileged,” said van der Burgh. “I think I am the type of swimmer when I come into a competition I have one big swim in me and I think I always try and use it up on the 100m. That’s the main goal for me, the Olympic Games.”
Earlier in the evening, van der Burgh saw teammate Le Clos pipped at the finish of the men’s 200m butterfly final.
“Tonight wasn’t South Africa’s night with Chad getting silver and me getting silver, so we’ll take silver this year and we’ll kick on next year,” said van der Burgh. “So it’s a lot of motivation, yeah.”
Le Clos was beaten by Hungary’s Laszlo Cseh who clocked 1:53.48, marginally ahead of the second-place time of 1:53.68.
Cseh looked to be in trouble as Le Clos opened a gap after two laps, but the South African could not maintain his blistering pace and surrendered the lead halfway through the third lap. Le Clos fought back gamely, but the Hungarian touched first, to claim gold.
Le Clos said afterwards his tactics couldn’t pull him through on the night.
“I tried to take it out really hard. I wanted to see if I could scare them off the first 100, but it didn’t work out,” said Le Clos. “I was massively disappointed not to win, of course, but massive congrats to Laszlo. He’s a great champion, and he’s a great friend of mine. He’s had a great season.”
ANA