It has not been even a week since Michael Andrew had qualified for the Olympics for the first time in his career for the 100m men’s breaststroke. On Friday, he put in another record-shattering performance to clock 1:55.26 in the 200m men’s individual medley semifinals.
Michael Andrew Strung Together A Perfect Run
Michael Andrew’s pace was evident right from the first leg of the event. He did the breaststroke leg in 32.21 seconds which gave him an advantage of 1.2 seconds by the time he reached 150 meters. This was the fastest time in the world so far for the leg.
However, in the final 50 meters, his pace declined rapidly and fell behind by nearly 2.5 seconds. Nevertheless, the final mark put up by Michael Andrew was still the 5th fastest mark in the history of the event. Only Laszlo Cseh, Kosuke Hagino, Michael Phelps, and Ryan Lochte are in front of him.
Previously, Michael Andrew had bettered his personal best by 0.5 seconds during the preliminary stage. However, that seemed to have drained him of all his energy which led to questions over whether his pace could get any faster in the future. Those concerns have all been blown away with the recent semis performance. This year, Duncan Scott with a time of 1:55.590 was the only other person to have a sub-1:56 time. As such, Michael Andrew has a real shot at the gold in the event in the upcoming Tokyo Olympics.
He already has a chance for a medal in the breaststroker event, but Adan Peaty has the gold on lockdown in that one. The Individual Medley, however, can be won. However, the freestyle leg continues to be Andrew’s biggest issue for the event. His freestyle split was slower than all other competitors in the semifinals.
