Asian Record for Michel Arkhangelskiy a Potential Arrival for Bahrain
There were a couple of countries you don’t expect to see on the international podium at last week’s Asian Games.
There was Chinese Taipei with 200 butterflier Wang Kuan-hung, though it wasn’t his first time on the Asian Games podium. There was Kyrgyzstan with breaststroker Denis Petrashov, though he has medaled at the World Championships and made an Olympic semifinal.
And then there was Bahrain. With a swimmer whose name is not very Bahraini. Though it is an indication of Bahrain’s global swimming ambitions for this Olympic quad.
Michel Arkhangelskiy made waves by winning the men’s 50 butterfly in 22.91, the first swimming medal for the island kingdom. It’s the second time that Arkhangelskiy has posted that time, doing so at the French Championships in June. That erased the Asian record set by Singapore’s Joseph Schooling of 22.93 from the 2017 World Championships.
Arkhangelskiy has had a long journey to the international stage. He was raised in France, calling Nice home. His father was born in Kazakhstan, his mother in Eastern Russia, both fleeing that country and unable to return. He was not given eligibility to represent France, and going to either of hits parents’ homes was not politically feasible.
So Arkhangelskiy looked for another option during a college career in the United States that included stops at Florida State and the University of California. Which brought him to Bahrain.
“I was waiting for a long time and at one point I was just disappointed,” he told Reuters last week. “I was pissed off about all this, all the politics, because you know it’s quite difficult to be the son of a political refugee.”
It has worked out well for Arkhangelskiy. He got to swim at the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Games in May, chopping a second off the national record in the 50 free and nearly two seconds off the 100. He trimmed the 50 back record – though that no longer exists; more on that later – as well as the 50 fly and 100 fly marks. The latter was seven seconds quicker than the national mark that Ahmed Helal posted at the 2025 Arab Championships.
“I have all the best conditions to swim for … everything is covered so I’m in the best condition to perform – as you see with the Asian Games gold medal,” he said.
But Arkhangelskiy is not alone. Also representing Bahrain at the Asian Games was Stephan Goncharov, who was born in Tonso, Russia. He’s swum collegiately in the United States at Pitt and LSU. He undercut Arkhangelskiy’s national mark in the 50 back by taking fourth place at the Asian Games. Also in the water for Bahrain at the GCC Games was Rob Bonsall, who swam at the Australian Swimming Trials in 2025.
Swimming has had an odd history with nationality changes. The closest brush to controversy in this era came two decades ago when sprinter Duje Draganja, who won a silver medal in the men’s 50 free in the 2004 Athens Olympics, flirted with changing his representation from Croatia to Qatar. The optics of that deal torpedoed it, a pretty clear pay-for-play agreement. The journey that Arkhangelskiy has taken is more circuitous than that. But it sets an interesting precedent that bears watching.
