FLASH! Luke Hobson Takes Down His 200 Free WR; Oceania Record For Max Giuliani In Second
Luke Hobson cut 0.30 from the 200 free WR he set earlier this week when he went 1:38.61 at the short-course worlds in Budapest.
The USA swimmer had made clear his intention for the final when he blasted 1:41.55 to lead the prelims, days after he downed Paul Biedermann’s super-suited individual WR to 1:38.91 on the 4×2 lead-off as the quartet won gold in world record time.
He returned to the Duna Arena on Sunday evening for the final individual event of the six-day meet where he took over the lead at the 75m mark before coming home in a new global standard.
Australian Max Giuliani set an Oceania record of 1:40.36 to take silver with Lucas Henveaux of Belgium winning bronze in 1:41.13.
Hobson, who is coached by Bob Bowman, said: “After the relay I knew that was a great split and I felt it was a really good swim. Yesterday was the third time I ever swam the 200m free in short course, I didn’t really know what I was doing or how to swim the race.
“But I thought that I could clean a few things up in the back 50 and I thought I executed those fixes really well and I knew that would pay off dropping another 3 tenths off the record.”
The 21-year-old thrives on the excitement of racing in the long and short-course pools where the likes of David Popovici, Matt Richards, Duncan Scott, Hwang Sunwoo and Lukas Märtens provide some of the opposition with the 200 enjoying great depth and offering some thrilling racing.
Hobson won bronze at the World Championships in Doha before moving on to Paris where he was third once more, 0.08 ahead of fourth-placed Scott. Then on to Budapest and his world-record exploits.
“It was a great year,” he said. “It was super exciting. I feel like I am in a really great spot right now. 2024 was a really good year for me and I am excited and looking forward next year in Singapore and of course I am focused on Los Angeles 2028. It feels amazing to be one of the guys that others swimmers look up to because that is what I was doing for many years in my career. I am going going to work as hard as I can and see if I can continue to get better.”
Giuliani was joint sixth at 75 before moving up to fourth at halfway. The Olympic 4×2 bronze medallist made his way into second with 50m to go but the deficit behind Hobson was too great to overcome while he cut 0.28 from Ed Sommerville’s Oceania standard of 1:40.64 set at the Australian Championships in September.
“Not too bad, ought to have won, but Luke is the absolute freak on the short-course,” he said. “Short-course is definitely my thing, so I shine where I shine. The record is pretty good, I can’t really complain. I go and get ready to do the best I can for my team in the relay. It’s going to hurt really bad, but I’m here for it.”
Henveaux claimed the first Belgian medal in the event in what was a national record. The Loughborough-based swimmer became the first Belgian man to win a freestyle medal at short-course worlds.
“I was fourth in the 400m three days ago and yeah I’m absolutely, actually stoked because it was very close to the podium there,” he said. “I really thought I could get it and I was pretty disappointed after getting fourth and now I saw this race, there’s a lot of great swimmers here. “The world record was broken. I knew Luke could go out faster, I tried to take advantage of it by going close to the lane. I felt a little bit of an advantage and in the last 25 metres I just saw that I was pretty much on a line with everyone and it was just a lot of guts and I executed it well.”
