Dmitriy Balandin came away with the gold medal in the men’s 200-meter breaststroke final, Kazakhstan’s second gold medal of these 2016 Olympics, but the country’s first-ever medal in swimming.
Olympic swimming results 2016: Dmitriy Balandin wins men’s 200m breaststroke, first swimming medal for Kazakhstan
Jeanna Kelley has been covering the Falcons for The Falcoholic since 2011 and the NFL for SB Nation since 2015.
Balandin joined Nijat Rahimov, who won gold in men’s 77kg weightlifting here in Rio, giving Kazakhsan 18 total gold medals all-time in Olympic competition. But Wednesday marked the first time anyone from the country finished in the top three in any swimming event.
Joshua Prenot of the United States won silver in the 200-meter breaststroke, and Anton Chupkov of Russia finished third, securing the bronze.
Prenot was the top-ranked American heading into the final based on his performance in the semifinals. In the 200m breaststroke semifinals on Tuesday, Prenot finished third with a time of 2:07.78.
In the semifinals, Japan’s Ippei Watanabe finished first with a time of 2:07.22 and Andrew Willis of Great Britain finished second with a time of 2:07.73. American Kevin Cordes, who won silver at the world championships in 2015 and had been favored to potentially medal in the 200m breaststroke in Rio, got out to a very fast start but slowed down en route to a 2:07.99 finish. The time was slower than the 2:07.81 he swam in the Olympic trials, but still good enough to qualify him for the finals.
Rounding out the participants in the final were reigning world champion Marco Koch of Germany and Yasuhiro Koseki of Japan.
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