Matt Richards and Tom Dean earned a British one-two in the men’s 200m freestyle at the World Aquatics Championships in Fukuoka, Japan, with only 0.02 seconds separating gold and silver.
South Korea’s Hwang Sun-woo took bronze, while last year’s world champion, David Popovici of Romania, finished fourth.
In several ways, history repeated itself only two days shy of the second anniversary of Dean and Duncan Scott’s historic top-two finish at the Tokyo Olympics, when they became the first British swimmers to claim gold and silver at the Games. They finished only 0.04sec apart, having been outside shots for the title.
A similar story played out in Fukuoka, where the gold had Popovici’s name on it — until the last 25 metres of racing. After finishing
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