Popovici fires Dressel with a historic gold at the World Swimming Championships

David Popovici became the first swimmer in half a century to become world champion in the 200 and 100 meter freestyle.

His predecessor was the American Jim Montgomery in 1973, in the neolithic of professional swimming.

Few technicians were surprised.

The Romanian is only 17 years old and his trajectory since they began to register his marks, five years ago, indicates an unusual progression in the history of aquatic sports.

His brave defense of gold in the last meters of the 100m final, yesterday at the World Championships held in Budapest, showed that in addition to a privileged phenotype and genetics for sliding, he has the kind of ambition that consecrates the most large.

"The 100m brings out your wild side," he said, "and I like that too."

Popovici climbed onto the pool bench at the Duna Arena and stretched his 1.90-meter-long body with the flexibility of a fakir.

He was about to start the final of the queen event, the 100-meter freestyle, and next to him there was none of the finalists of the Tokyo Games.

Neither the American Caeleb Dressel, suddenly discharged for unspecified medical reasons, nor the Australian Kyle Chalmers, nor the Russian Kliment Kolesnikov, banned along with all his countrymen after the invasion of Ukraine.

All the pressure was on him.

A young Romanian of junior age representing a country on the economic and political margins, without great infrastructures and with hardly any tradition in swimming, suddenly a national hero, faced with the challenge of his life.

Not since Ian Thorpe became the youngest world champion of all time, aged 15 in Perth in 1998, has a freestyle swimmer emerged more prematurely authoritarian than Popovici.

Stranger is its origin: the Navi club, a swimming pool without much tradition in Bucharest, in a country that is very far from the orbit of the great powers of this sport.

Popovici had just won the 200 with the second best time ever with a textile swimsuit and on Tuesday he had completed the 100 semifinal in 41.13 seconds.

Never has a boy under the age of 18 swum so fast in the 50, 100 and 200 meter freestyle.

At 13 years old he had swum the 50 in 22.22 seconds.

Speed ​​giants like Ben Proud (22.65s with 17 years), Alex Popov (22.87s with 19), Gary Hall (23.40s with 17) or Florent Manaudou (21.80s with 19) had not been able to Go at your own pace in more mature ages.

Everything suggested that he would eat the shoal that surrounded him in the final of 100 in Budapest.

The pressure to lose 47 seconds, however, took its toll.

If in the semifinals he made the first length in 22.81 seconds, in the final he went all out and touched the first 50 plate in 22.72s.

Nine hundredths can be too much fuel when it comes to a teenager in training.

The lap was steep: he came back in 24.86s.

"He was too long for me," he acknowledged when he got out of the water.

He hit the wall in relatively mediocre time after France's Maxime Grousset passed him by an instant.

He struck gold like the predators.

He hit the last stroke and hit the wall in 47.58s.

Grousset stayed at 47.64s.

Popovici suffered to achieve his feat but never lost the style and balance that characterize him.

Prodigy of efficiency in pushing, he had 30 strokes in the first leg and 32 in the return.

Cesar Cielo, the man who holds the current world record (46.91s) since 2009 thanks to a swimsuit that helped him float, took 30 strokes in the first leg and 36 in the return, a sign of sinking.

Dressel at the 2019 Worlds, when he dropped from 47s, he had 19 strokes in the first leg and 35 in the second length.

"It's like a fight"

“I enjoy swimming the 200 more than the 100 because the 200 is more tactical, although training it is much harder,” said Popovici, speaking academic and articulate English, after the test.

“In the 100 we have to go out very strong and come back as fast as we can.

Animal instinct comes into play.

It is not pure power like the 50, it has a tactical point, but the second 50 of the 100 is wild, and that makes you suffer, but I like it”.

"The last meters of the 200 tests are usually less disputed," he reflected.

“That last pitch on the 100 is like a fight.

But I like the pressure, I like people yelling.

I like the excitement.

I would have preferred Caeleb Dressel to be here today, and Kyle Chalmers and Kliment Kolesnikov.

It would have been an honor and a challenge to swim with them.

But I understand Caeleb.

We are not machines!".

David Popovici won gold while Caeleb Dressel, the great swimming star, was flying to the United States, suddenly discharged, as announced by the United States federation, “for medical reasons” “unrelated to covid”.

In April, Dressel confessed that it was to overcome depression.

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