World Championships: Luca Urlando Pulls Away to Earn World Title for American Men
In November 2022, Luca Urlando thought his career might be over. He severe shoulder injury during a race at a World Cup meet in Indianapolis, knocking him completely out of the pool for six months and out of his signature butterfly events for more than a year. He came all the way back to qualify for the Paris Olympics, but he did not advance out of prelims in his only event, the 200 fly.
Now, Urlando is the world champion in the 200 butterfly, having defeated the field by three-quarters of a second while becoming the fourth swimmer in history to go below 1:52.
Canada’s Ilya Kharun, the only returning Olympic medalist in this final, jumped out to an early lead, but Urlando paced ahead of the field on the second lap. Underwaters were a key factor in Urlando’s dominance in the yards version of the 200 fly during the most recent college season, and his kickout at the midway mark of the race was the turning point in this one, with Urlando jumping out to a bodylength lead.
Up by more than a second with one length remaining, Urlando had to hold off a late surge from Poland’s Krzysztof Chmielewski, who was the only swimmer to go under 30 seconds coming home. But Urlando dug into the wall at 1:51.87 to secure gold, the first for the United States men this week in Singapore.
Urlando’s time of 1:51.87 knocked a half-second from his best time, and his performance was less than four tenths off the American record of 1:51.51 set by Michael Phelps in 2009.
“It has felt like a six-year process to get back to this moment,” Urlando told NBC Sports in a post-race interview. “A lot of doubt, a lot of really hard times, a lot of things that people don’t see on an everyday basis. I told myself post-surgery that if I could get through those next few months, nothing could really stop me. Obviously getting to do it on a world stage like this is just amazing.”
Chmielewski took silver in 1:52.64, matching his finish from the World Championships two years ago and continuing an excellent tradition for Poland in the event. Before Chmielewski, Pawel Korzeniowski won three medals in the event, with a gold in 2005 and silvers in 2009 and 2013, while Jan Switkowski won bronze in 2015.
Bronze went to Australia’s Harrison Turner in 1:54.17, with Kharun missing the podium by 0.17 with a time of 1:54.34.
Urlando become the first American to win a World Championships medal in the event since Phelps won his fifth and final world title in 2011. Aside from Phelps, no American man had reached the podium in this event since 2003, when Tom Malchow won bronze.
As for this year’s World Championships, the gold medal is the first for the American men and only the team’s second individual medal following Luke Hobson’s silver in the 200 freestyle. The team is coming off a Paris Olympics when Bobby Finke was the only swimmer to win gold (in the 1500 freestyle), and it did not come until the final individual race of the meet. With Finke struggling earlier Tuesday in the 800 free, the Americans could have been looking at a shut-out from the top of the podium if not for this remarkable performance from Urlando.
This race opened up with two dominant 200 butterflyers from recent years absent from the event. Olympic gold medalist Leon Marchand opted out to focus on the individual medleys while world-record holder Kristof Milak is absent from the World Championships for the third consecutive year.
Entering the meet, only two swimmers in the field had ever been under 1:53: Urlando, with his stunning 1:52.37 from April that jumped him to fourth all-time in the event behind Milak, Marchand and Michael Phelps; and Kharun, who clocked 1:52.80 on the way to Olympic bronze last year. Chmielewski joined that club in prelims while Urlando reached that territory for the second and third times in his career in the first two rounds, setting himself up as a slight favorite for the final.
Urlando then delivered when it mattered with the moment the U.S. men desperately needed.
