Hwang Sun-woo Takes Second Place After David Popovich

Hwang Sun-woo takes second place after Popovich in the Mare Nostrum 200m freestyle

Men's 100m backstroke Lee Joo-ho and 400m individual medley Kim Min-seop also won silver medals.

Hwang Seon-woo (Gangwon Provincial Office) unfortunately lost in his first match against David Popovic (Romania) in a year.

Hwang Seon-woo took second place by touching the touchpad in 1 minute 45.68 seconds in the men's 200m freestyle swimming competition at the 2nd Mare Nostrum Series held in Barcelona, ​​Spain on the 30th (Korean time).

First place was Popovich, who finished the race in 1 minute 44.74 seconds. 파워볼사이트

Popovich also set a new competition record, surpassing 1 minute 44.88 seconds set by Paul Biedermann (Germany) in 2009.

Sunwoo Hwang and Popovich faced each other for the first time in about a year since the 2023 Fukuoka World Championships.

At that time, in the 200m freestyle final, Hwang Sun-woo took third place with a time of 1 minute 44.42 seconds, and Popovich took fourth place with a time of 1 minute 44.90 seconds.

At the 2024 Doha World Championships held in February this year, Popovich did not participate, and Hwang Sun-woo won the gold medal with a time of 1 minute 44.75 seconds.

Sunwoo Hwang is setting his body clock for the Paris Olympics, which opens in July.

In order to shorten the record, I participated in this competition without going through 'tapering', which involves properly mixing rest and training, so my performance was not 100%.

Sunwoo Hwang ranked first overall with a time of 1 minute 47.31 seconds in the preliminaries among 60 participants, but lost first place to Popovich in the final.

David Popovich, whose best time this season before this competition was 1 minute 45.10 seconds, rose to third place in the men's 200m freestyle 2024 rankings.

Sunwoo Hwang's best time this season is 1 minute 44.75 seconds, tied for 4th place with Duncan Scott (Great Britain).

Lucas Martens (1:44.14, Germany) and Matthew Richards (1:44.69, Great Britain) are in first and second place this season.

Sunwoo Hwang and Popovich will compete in the 100m freestyle event on the 31st, and will face each other again in the third competition of the Mare Nostrum series to be held in Monaco on June 2-3.

Hojun Lee (Jeju City Hall), who participated in the same event in this second competition, ranked 4th with a time of 1 minute 46.80 seconds.

Third place was Katsuhiro Matsumoto (Japan) with 1 minute 46.09 seconds.

Yang Jae-hoon (Gangwon Provincial Office) ranked 3rd overall in the preliminaries with a time of 1 minute 47.95 seconds, but was pushed down to 6th place in the final by hitting the touchpad in 1 minute 48.64 seconds.

Lee Joo-ho (Seogwipo City Hall), the ‘Korean backstroke star’, and Kim Min-seop (Dokdo Sports Team), a strong butterfly and individual medley swimmer, also won silver medals.

Joo-ho Lee placed second in the men's 100m backstroke final with a time of 54.03, 0.01 seconds behind Michel Lamberti (Italy) with a time of 54.02.

Lee Joo-ho will attempt to win the main event, the 200m backstroke, on the 31st.

Minseop Kim took second place in the men's 400m individual medley with a time of 4 minutes 15.62 seconds.

There was only one athlete who finished the race faster than Kim Min-seop, Tomoyuki Matsushida (Japan) with a time of 4 minutes 13.28 seconds.

On the 31st, Kim Min-seop aims to win his second medal of the competition in the men's 200m butterfly, where he holds the Korean record (1 minute 54.95 seconds).

Kim Seo-young (Gyeongbuk Provincial Office) placed 7th in the women's 200m individual medley with a time of 2 minutes 13.53 seconds.

Ji Yu-chan (Daegu Metropolitan City Hall) finished 9th out of 93 athletes in the men's 50m freestyle preliminaries with a time of 22.55 seconds and was pushed to the B final.

He took first place in the B final by setting a record of 22.37 seconds.

In the A final, Florent Manaudou (France) won the championship with 21.89.