Kolesnikov breaks European Championships record to win men's 100m freestyle gold

Kliment Kolesnikov continued his good form in the pool at the LEN European Aquatics Championships Budapest 2021 on Wednesday (19 May) with victory in the blue-riband men's 100m freestyle.

The 20-year-old Russian, who has already won the 50m backstroke title in the Hungarian capital breaking the world record twice in the process, reached the turn in a comfortable lead and in the closing stages almost looked like he had gone out too hard.

However, Kolesnikov touched home in first place, with his 47.37 seconds a new European Championships record, breaking Alain Bernard's 13-year-old mark.

His 50m lead of 0.20 seconds had been shaved down to 0.08 seconds, however, by Italy's Alessandro Miressi, who took silver. Kolesnikov's teammate Andrei Minakov claimed bronze in 47.74.

"After the semi-finals I was trying to understand my mistakes since my time was worse then I had in the prelims," he explained later. "I decided to start faster like I had done at our Russian nationals, I haven’t seen my 50m split yet but I think I made that goal because I saw the other swimmers were behind me."

Kolesnikov comes up shy in second

However, the scheduling meant Kolesnikov was made to swim the 100m backstroke semi-finals just minutes later, where he failed to qualify for the final.

"I was just tired. It’s something that can happen to you," he said. "It was our common decision with my coach to swim the back as we hoped I could do it. It turned out that I could not at this moment. Anyway, we are not giving up the idea for the Olympics but we will work more on it."

Earlier, Ukraine's Mykhaylo Romanchuk took gold in the Championships' joint-longest event, the men's 1500m freestyle.

Romanchuk's golden return

The 24-year-old, who has not competed over that distance since winning silver at the 2019 World Championships in Gwangju, South Korea, clocked a time of 14:39.89,

"I’m very happy with this result, especially because I didn’t swim the 1500m for two years," he said.

Romanchuk led two Italians, Gregorio Paltrinieri (14:42.91) and Domenico Acerenza (14:54.36), on the podium.

Home favourite Kristof Milak, the world record holder, blitzed his competitors to comfortably win the men's 200m fly.

The 21-year-old was never under any pressure as he led from the start, clocking a new championship record 1:51.10.

He was so fast that he had time to turn around and watch his rivals sprint for the line, with Italy's Federico Burdisso (1:54.28) touching just ahead of Milak's teammate Tamas Kenderesi (1:54.43). Bulgaria's Antani Ivanov, who was in third after 150m, finished a further seven-hundredths behind Kenderesi, who put in a strong 30.09 final lap split.

Swede Hansson on song

Rio 2016 Olympian Sophie Hansson of Sweden celebrated her first major international long-course title with triumph in the women's 100m breaststroke.

Her 1:05.69 was enough to hold off Italians Arianna Castiglioni (1:06.13) and Martina Carraro (1:06.21), with Russia's defending champion Yuliya Efimova only touching in fourth.

"I feel amazing, this is a dream come true," Hansson said. "I feel very grateful for all those around me – only a few weeks ago I tried to get my time under 1:07 and now I’m under 1:06 so all my hard training paid off."

In the men's 200m individual medley semi-finals, home swimmer Hubert Kos set a new world junior record.

The 18-year-old went under 1:57, clocking 1:56.99 to post the top time in qualifying for the final.

Netherlands' Kira Toussaint (27.36) and Maaike de Waard (27.74) won gold and bronze in the non-Olympic women's 50m backstroke event, separated by Great Britain's Kathleen Dawson (27.46).

And Russia took the evening's final gold medal, winning the men's 4x200m freestyle relay in 7:03.48, a new championship record.

They led throughout the race, with the only real doubt whether Great Britain or Italy – neck-and-neck at 400m and 600m – would win silver. Ultimately, the British quartet edged home ahead of the Italians.