David Popovich swam the world record

Romanian swimmer David Popovich has secured the status of, perhaps, the main prodigy in the world of sports. At the age of 17, having just become a two-time world champion, Popovich set a world record at the European Championships in Rome for the most prestigious distance – 100 m, swimming it in 46.86.

The Roman European Championship is not the most notable competition of the year, especially considering that swimmers recently, in June-July, had a world championship in Budapest. But what happened in the 100-meter race will certainly set him apart from everyone else. Their outcome was too extraordinary not to turn into a huge hit.

A hundred meters is a distance that is not more prestigious in swimming. And the one who happens to be its king, set trends on it, almost automatically puts his name on the list of heroes about whom a person, at least tangentially interested in sports, is ashamed not to know. Such heroes were Matt Biondi, Alexander Popov, Peter van den Hoogenband. They proved their superiority in a fierce fight with other celebrities, and, as a rule, still not with a swoop, but with a little cooking in the elite.

David Popovich, a guy from a country that was never really associated with swimming exploits, did not need time to adapt to it at all. He took off at supersonic speed. Last year, at the age of 16, he crushed junior achievements and went to the Olympics in Tokyo, performing at it for the boy is simply amazing: he went to the finals at both “profile” distances, finishing seventh in the 100 m and fourth in the 200 m. This year , at 17, took two golds on them at the world championship in Budapest. And a month and a half after him, he did something that, perhaps, is more valuable than the gold medal of the world champion.

The world record in the 100 meters, the main world record in swimming – 46.91 – has held for a very, very long time, since 2009.

And there was really nothing strange about it. It was installed by the extremely fast Brazilian Cesar Cielo. But it’s not only and not so much in his playfulness. The end of the decade before last is a special era in swimming. Then equipment manufacturers invented polyurethane suits that replaced the usual swimming trunks. It was a real revolution. New suits, as it turned out, reduce water resistance, dramatically increasing “aerodynamics”. Records then fell one after another. As a result, just in the same 2009, the International Aquatic Federation (FINA) banned polyurethane suits covering almost the entire body. And in textiles, it has become incredibly difficult to show results even close to record numbers. In fact, if Popovich in Rome had simply “floated” out of 47 seconds, it would already have been a phenomenal success for the “textile” era. But he was able to drop five hundredths from Cesar Ciela’s record, forcing his coach Adrian Radulescu to answer quite predictable questions.

Well, for example, about how David Popovich manages to develop such a pace in the 100-meter race, if he does not at all look like an ideal specialist in such a distance? After all, they are all broad-shouldered giants who exude power. And Popovich is a thin, rather even slender young man. “Heightened sense of water,” answered Radulescu. “It doesn’t really matter how much power you are able to generate. What matters is how much you can put into your speed.”

And the coach also talked about the difficult, but terribly combative character of Popovich, about how he once arranged a “survival” competition among children: after each 25-meter segment, the group was reduced and the last one was eliminated at the intermediate finish.

In each of the rounds, David Popovich was held by a miracle, touching the side of the penultimate one. But during the final 25-meter race, it turned out that his opponent, who had looked much cooler before, was so tired that he could no longer resist. And Popovich still had a whole carload of energy and anger.

Adrian Radulescu, probably, himself perfectly understood that with all the effort to clearly explain salt, he would not be able to understand the nature of his ward’s talent. As he will not be able to give an accurate forecast about what will happen to him next, after the body undergoes inevitable changes, thinness that cuts the eye will disappear. But for now, the magic lives on.

Alexey Dospekhov