South African Pieter Coetze broke the 50m backstroke world record in short-course swimming at a World Aquatics World Cup in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, on Friday.
Coetze, 22, clocked 22.09 seconds, taking two hundredths off Russian Kliment Kolesnikov’s world record from 2022.
“This is unreal,” Coetze said. “Not much going through my mind right now, but first world record, I’ll remember this moment forever.”
Coetze is the first male swimmer from an African nation to break a world record since fellow South African Chad le Clos in 2016 in the short course 100m butterfly.
The three-stop World Cup series is held in short-course (or 25-meter) pools as opposed to 50-meter (long-course) pools used at the Olympics.
Coetze, a two-time Olympian, placed fifth in the 100m back and seventh in the 200m back at the Paris Games.
He followed that by winning a medal in all three backstrokes at the 2025 World Championships in a 50-meter pool in Singapore: gold in the 100m and silver in the 50m and 200m.
The 50m back makes its Olympic debut in 2028, along with the 50m fly and 50m breaststroke.
The World Cup stop in Tashkent concludes Saturday with finals at 9 a.m. ET, live on Peacock.
