Teenagers Popovici and McIntosh steal limelight with golden victories as Dressel quits
BUDAPEST: After Caeleb Dressel, one of many veterans anticipated to dominate the World Swimming Championships, stop the competitors on Wednesday, two youngsters, 17-year-old David Popovici and Summer time McIntosh, 15, leapt to the highest step of the rostrum.
Dressel, a seven-time Olympic gold medalist, had “withdrawn for medical causes. For his long-term well being,” Lindsay Mintenko, the Swimming Managing Director for the USA group, informed media firstly of the night session.
“He’s simply not match to compete proper now.”
Popovici then claimed victory in certainly one of Dressel’s occasions, the boys’s 100m freestyle, and McIntosh received the ladies’s 200m butterfly.
Within the different particular person finals, 20-year-old Frenchman Leon Marchand accomplished the boys’s medley double within the 200m and Kylie Masse received a second Canadian gold when she took the 50m ladies’s backstroke.
The night ended with one other of the US group’s veteran stars, Katie Ledecky, carving a spot within the report books with the successful ladies’s 200m relay group.
It was Ledecky’s twenty first world championship medal, greater than every other girl.
Australia took silver whereas Canada, with McIntosh amassing a second medal of the day, held on for bronze.
Dressel had already received two golds in Budapest earlier than his final race on Tuesday morning. It was a warmth of the 100m freestyle and the Olympic champion certified solely second quickest behind Popovici.
{The teenager} was requested after the ultimate if he had scared off Dressel.
“I don’t suppose so, I feel he’s too huge of a boy to be working away from somebody like myself or frankly anybody however I hope he’s OK and I hope he’ll come again stronger.”
Popovici, who had turn into the primary Romanian man to win a world title when he took the 200m free, grew to become the primary man to do the 100-200 freestyle double on the world championships since American Jim Montgomery in 1973.
Dutchman Pieter van den Hoogenband repeated the uncommon feat on the Sydney Olympics in 2000.
“I’m glad we acquired to put in writing a small web page in swimming historical past,” mentioned the smiling Popovic. “Some would say an enormous web page, however we prefer to hold it low key.”
“I’m glad to have gotten two golds now, I feel it is going to be fairly heavy carrying them.”
Popovici edged Frenchman Maxime Grousset by 0.6sec and Canadian Joshua Liendo by 0.13.
“Within the 200 I used to be stunned by how a lot I received by. This time I used to be stunned by how little we received by,” he mentioned, including he most popular the 200m occasion.
“I think about 200m extra of a sensible race,” he mentioned.
Within the two-lap 100, he mentioned, “we now have to exit as quick as we will and are available again as quick as doable. It’s an animal intuition race.”
Popovic ready for a profession as a sports activities star by attending a bilingual college in Romania and speaks fluent English.
“I haven’t completed highschool but I don’t even drive but,” he identified.
At 15, McIntosh is even youthful.
The Canadian broke the world junior report as she added the 200m butterfly to the silver she had received within the 400m freestyle on the opening day.
McIntosh beat Hali Flickinger of america by 0.88sec with Zhang Yufei of China third.
“I simply actually gave it my all and did every thing I may, and put in all my power and all my focus, and simply stretched for the wall and put my hand on the wall as quick as I presumably may,” McIntosh mentioned.
Marchand, who claimed the 400m title on Saturday, grabbed the lead within the breaststroke and held it on the final lap to complete in 1min 55.22sec, edging out American Carson Foster and Japanese bronze medallist Daiya Seto.
The second Canadian gold medallist, Masse, a relative previous timer at 26, had received gold within the 100m backstroke on the earlier two world championships and a silver in Budapest.
She has by no means received a significant medal on the shortest distance.
