FLASH! Hubert Kos Uses Sensational Finish to Smash 200 Back World Record
Over the past three years, Hungary’s Hubert Kos has captured titles in the 200 backstroke on every level, including Olympic gold in Paris plus long course world titles in 2023 and 2025. Now, for the first time in his career, Kos is a world-record holder, having taken down the previous standard in the men’s 200 backstroke Thursday evening at the World Cup finale in Toronto.
Kos was chasing a mark that had lasted almost a decade, the time of 1:45.63 established by Mitch Larkin in Sydney in 2015. Kos nearly nipped that time at the Short Course World Championships last December, thrilling a partisan Hungarian crowd in Budapest with a dominant win while falling just two hundredths short of the all-time best. In Toronto, however, Kos would not be denied.
His halfway split was 51.60, a quarter-second behind world-record pace, but he was sensational on the third 50 as he moved just under Larkin’s pace. On the way home, it was clear that Kos would become the first man to set a world record during this World Cup circuit, and he hit the wall in 1:45.12, breaking the standard by a half-second. The 23-year-old pounded the water in celebration as his rivals crossed over into his lane to offer their congratulations.
“Obviously, it would have been nice to get it in my home pool, in my home country, but I proved to myself that I could get pretty close,” Kos said. “Honestly, I thought it could be anywhere between 45 and 49. So, you never know with these. I haven’t really been back in practices. So it’s just good to see that I can swim well, even though I’m not killing myself in practices just yet because I needed a little bit of a mental break after Worlds.”
Italian swimmers rounded out the top-three finishers here. Thomas Ceccon, the Olympic champion in the 100-meter race, was second in 1:47.49 while Lorenzo Mora took third in 1:50.32, holding off a late surge from Japanese medley star Tomoyuki Matsushita (1:50.53).
Later in the session, Kos recorded a second-place effort in the 100 IM, his time of 50.56 putting him within three tenths of Shaine Casas, his training partner at the University of Texas.
“We’re the best team in the world, like the best training group in the world,” Kos said. “It just proves how good of a coach Bob (Bowman) is and how he consistently delivers performances. It’s not just one person, not just two people. It’s literally like 10, 15.”
