Luke Greenbank described winning World Championship bronze as a dream come true after he produced the best performance of his career in the men's 200m backstroke final.
The 21-year-old set a blistering lifetime best time of 1m55.85s to claim his first senior international medal in Gwangju, adding to the personal best he recorded in the 100m event earlier in the week.
Greenbank’s breakthrough will not come as a surprise. The Crewe-born ace won a handful of junior international medals and broke the World Junior 200m backstroke record in 2015.
He said: “It’s difficult to put into words. I went in there relaxed, but confident, and I just stuck to my race plan and it seems to have paid off - I knew if I had a good last 50m I’d be in for a good swim and that’s what happened.
“I’ve had a couple of disappointing years, so we tried something new with training and it seems to have worked.
“If I keep that going, hopefully I can improve on what I’ve done this year.”
Elsewhere, a quartet of Duncan Scott, Calum Jarvis, Tom Dean and James Guy secured a fifth-place finish in an entertaining men’s 4x200m freestyle relay final.
After the winners Australia, the next four places were separated by just 0.23 seconds and the British team missed out on a medal by only six hundredths of a second with a time of 7m02.04s – just outside the national record.
“We swam very fast, it was just a very quick race,” Scott said. “It was a really solid effort and we’ve got to walk away proud.”
In the women’s 200m breaststroke final, Molly Renshaw capped off a successful week by finishing fifth in a time of 2m23.78s – less than a second shy of a podium place.
Meanwhile, in her first individual final at world level, Freya Anderson set the second-fastest time of her career to finish eighth in the women’s 100m freestyle final.
Sportsbeat 2019