Chad Le Clos ousts Dinko Jukic in Men’s 400m IM: Day one – 2011 FINA Swimming World Cup, Dubai
Butterfly World Champion and Commonwealth Games double gold medallist, Chad Le Clos ousted his strongest rival, Austria’s Dinko Jukic in Men’s 400m Individual Medley (IM) final on the opening day of the 2011 Federation Internationale de Natation (FINA) Swimming
World Cup series. The competition is a short course event and the session concluded on Friday, October 7, in Dubai.
The 19-year-old Le Clos collected his first gold medal of the competition by dictating terms to his competitors in the IM discipline. With his outstanding career at international levels of swimming, the South African was evidently strong for the gold medal.
The champion faced strong resistance from his challenger, Jukic, who engaged him in a neck-to-neck race throughout the 16-lap swim. Jukic kept his lead over Le Clos throughout the first 300 metres of the race, but the 19-year-old showed his skills in the
final 100 metres and devastated his hopes by occupying the title of the event.
Le Clos captured the gold medal of distant IM event by clocking a time of 4 minutes and 04.58 seconds. His effort was almost four seconds slower than the World Cup mark of 4 minutes and 00.63 seconds, set by Thiago Pereira of Brazil in 2009.
Nevertheless, the Austrian easily grabbed silver medal of the event as he remained 1.07 seconds slower than the champion and clocked a time of 4 minutes and 05.65 seconds.
Jukic was in a significant lead of almost seven seconds over his following swimmer, Marco Koch of Germany, who emerged on the finishing wall for third position, with a timing of 4 minutes and 12.27 seconds. This was Koch’s second medal of the session, as
he previously secured gold medal of 50m breast-stroke.
The arena enjoyed dazzling efforts of all finalists while Le Clos expressed contentment over his victory in the first of seven legs of the FINA scheduled World Cup. In addition, the champion also articulated his views of enhancing his performance at the
upcoming stages of FINA/ARENA series.
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