Birmingham 2022

Chad Le Clos equals record medal haul as he takes 200m butterfly silver

Chad le Clos in action during the 200m butterfly heats on Sunday morning.
Chad le Clos in action during the 200m butterfly heats on Sunday morning.
Image: REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth

Chad Le Clos won the 18th Commonwealth Games medal of his career in Birmingham on Sunday, but he lost the 200m butterfly crown he had held since 2010. 

He now jointly holds the all-time record haul of 18 Games medals alongside two shooters, Australian Phillip Adams and Mick Gault of England. 

Le Clos went out hard and held the lead going out of the final turn, but New Zealand’s Lewis Clareburt, who on the Saturday won the 400m individual medley that Le Clos had won 12 years ago, stormed past at the end to touch in 1min 55.60sec. 

Le Clos was second in 1:55.89 and Englishman James Guy third in 1:56.77. 

Le Clos lifted his first 200m fly crown at the 2010 Games in Delhi, winning it in a 1:56.48 Games record, and he lowered the mark to 1:55.07 at Glasgow 2014 and then dropped it further to 1:54.00 at Gold Coast 2018. 

His mark survives for at least another four years. 

Newly crowned 100m backstroke champion Pieter Coetzé is on track to add a 50m backstroke gong to his haul after winning his semifinal in 24.81, just one-hundredth of a second faster than Andrew Jeffcoat of New Zealand, who won the other semifinal. 

Erin Gallagher qualified second fastest in the women’s 50m butterfly behind Australian Emma McKeon, who could crash Le Clos’s record haul party at these Games. 

She already has 15 medals and could surpass 18 before the end of this gala. 

Le Clos has the 100m butterfly on Monday as well as the 4x100m medley and 4x200m freestyle relays to add to his haul. 

In other action elsewhere, bowlers Thabelo Muvhango, Bridget Calitz, Esme Kruger and Johanna Snyman narrowly held off a powerful England team in their women’s fours quarterfinal 12-11, after enjoying an 8-2 lead after six ends. 

The English outfit boasted two world championship medallists, and all had made the podium at previous Games.  

Weightlifter Anneke Spies ended fourth in the women’s 59kg competition. She managed 85kg in the snatch and 105 in the clean and jerk for a total of 190kg, 6kg short of the podium.

The Proteas netball team comprehensively beat Barbados 91-36 and  

In triathlon, the mixed relay team of Jamie Riddle, Simone Ackerman, Henri Schoeman and Shanae Williams finished eighth in 1hr 21min 17sec. 

Riddle gave Team SA some early hope in the first leg, finishing the 300m swim in first place, and he was still in the fight for the lead by the end of the 5km bike and fourth after the 2km run. 

But after that the SA team slipped backwards. 


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