Ronan Wantenaar continued his great form of late when he broke his third Namibian record this month. Competing at the Monaco leg of the Mare Nostrum Swimming Tour over the weekend, Wantenaar reached the semifinals of the 50m breaststroke, breaking his own Namibian Open record in the process.
He narrowly missed out on the final after coming third in his semifinal in a new Namibian Open record of 27,05 seconds.
His previous record was 27,24 seconds that he had established at the Singapore National Championships last year.
Wantenaar competed against some of the world’s top swimmers like Ilya Shymanovich of Belarus, who has won numerous medals at world and European swimming championships and holds the world record in the short course 100m breastsroke event; and Nicolo Martinenghi of Italy who is the reigning Olympic champion in the 100m breastroke, while he also won gold in the same event at the 2022 World Aquatics Championships.
The competition took the form of knock-out duels, with the fastest swimmers progressing from the first round through to the final where the fastest two swimmers remained.
In the first round Wantenaar set the seventh fastest time of 27,79 to progress to the next round where improved his time to 27,60, posting the fifth fastest time overall.
In the quarterfinals he set the fourth fastest time overall of 27,31 to qualify for the semifinals, where he finished third in his semifinal heat in 27,05. That saw him narrowly missing out on a place in the final, as he finished a mere 0,02 seconds behind Ludovico Blu Art Viberti of Italy.
Shymanovich went on to win the final in 26,59 seconds, with Viberti coming second in 26,80.
Wantenaar also competed in the 100m breaststroke where he qualified for the B final with a time of 1:01,74, but he decided to withdraw from the event to focus on the 50m.
Wantenaar said he is happy with his form but there is room for improvement.
“I am very happy with my form in the 50m, but I know that there is still a lot I can do to improve my technique and mental preparation, in order to handle stress and be ready to race at the same level as the best swimmers in the world,” he said.
It was Wantenaar’s third national record after he set new records in the 100m and 200m breaststroke at the Giant Open Meet in Saint Denis, Paris the previous weekend.
On 9 May he broke his Namibian record of 2:15,52 with a new time of 2:15,27, and the next day he broke his 100m national record of 1:01,35 with a new time of 1:00,53.
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