ABU DHABI (UAE) - Seventeen years have past since then – and Santos is still in the pool and still the fastest in the butterfly dash, as became the oldest-ever champion at the age of 41 here in Abu Dhabi on day 5 at the FINA World Swimming Championships.

Canada enjoyed another medal haul of a day as they bagged three titles. One by Margaret MacNeil came with a world record in the 50m Backstroke - and also came with the Maple Leafs bagging Kylie Masse’s silver. The 4x200m Freestyle Relay fell just 0.11sec shy of bettering the global mark. And then Sydney Pickrem delivered a 200m Individual Medley win to push Canada’s golden tally to six – equalling the number of titles they claimed at the previous 14 editions combined!

The only Japanese swimmer in Abu Dhabi, Daiya Seto achieved the 200m-400m Individual Medley double – which was even more astonishing since Seto came first in the 400m IM for the fifth time in a row to equal Team GB’s James Hickman’s historical feat of winning the same event five times at the short course worlds.

China’s Tang Qianting caused an upset to win the women’s 100m breast by 0.03sec. In the men’s 4x50m Medley Relay, not even that gap separated the top two, so the Russian Swimming Federation and the US shared the gold. In either a statistical oddity or the closeness of the peak performance currently on display in swimming, this was the second tied relay race in Abu Dhabi.

Competitive swimming is a gruelling sport. It takes several hours of rigorous daily practice, and it tests those who devote themselves to race at an elite level. Swimming several kilometres a day to be the fastest over just 50-100-200 metres. Spending long hours in the water to race in an event, which lasts less than half a minute or one or two. These are the cruel comparisons – and serve as an explanation why most of the swimmers call it a day before they enter their 30s. A couple of exceptional athletes can endure until 32 or 33, 35 at the maximum.

And then – you have Nicholas Santos.

At 41, he still belongs to the top-flight among the fastest butterfliers. He is specialised in this distance, which makes everything is a bit easier as it requires less effort to maintain a high level ( for those who question this, just ask those who swim 200m Butterfly or 400m Individual Medley). Still, Santos spent two decades among the best and he is still the best as he left all the others, 10-15 years younger ones, behind. He out-touched Trinidad and Tobago's Dylan Carter (26-years-old) by 0.05sec. He outlasted 30-year-old Matteo Rivolta of Italy by 0.09, while fellow world record holder Szebasztian Szabo of Hungary, aged 25, was 0.12sec adrift. It was Santos’ third world title after previously taking the 2012 and 2018 titles - the most anyone has laid claim to in this event.

“It’s amazing to be a three-time world champion,” Santos said. 

Regarding his age, he joked: “I’m like Masters swimmers…. For me, it’s such a challenge to be here at 41-years-old. The others are pretty fast, going 21.9s but here, competing in a world championship final is such a pressure that it might have an effect. I did it a lot of times, so I didn’t feel that pressure quite like the younger ones. So, this is awesome to win again, and recently I even had a couple of tries to break my world record and I got close.”

Still, the number one motto in swimming is that pain is gain. Bearing that for ten years, twenty years is quite demanding but, including his formative years, Santos has already spent three decades in this painful business.

“For me is not that tough, at least now, as I only train from Monday till Friday,” he said. “It’s not that hard as for the other ones who even push the Saturdays and do double practices. I have my own company. I have to work. I have also a son to take care of so I’m changing my life now; I’m really doing a transition to have my next career. I have a club, we built a professional team. We managed to land a sponsorship deal last week so I’m learning how to do business, too. But at the same time, the competition still gives me great feelings. I simply love races; I still cannot live without them.”

Still, he should have found the Holy Grail, otherwise, it’s hard to believe that he is not just swimming but a world champion at 41 and not among the Masters. Or is it genetics? 

“I cannot answer if it has anything to do with genetics. What I can talk about is what I drink, what I eat, how I train. For example, I do a lot of high-intensity practices, but the volume is really low compared to the ones the others do. 

“And I try different things, no repeating the same stuff for long-long years,” added Santos. “I’ll do my own gym sessions, my nutrition – and it works!”

Besides Santos’ amazing win, Margaret MacNeil’s world record of 25.27 in the 50m Backstroke was the other highlight this evening – for two reasons at least. One is the global mark, what as absolutely amazing as it is, MacNeil smashed it. Shaving off 0.33sec in a 50m event is simply incredible. Moreover, what made it even more unbelievable is that Maggie is primarily a butterflier – she is the reigning world and Olympic champion in the 100m fly. Now she just set a new world record in backstroke.

“If you would have told me my first world record would be backstroke, I wouldn’t have believed you,” said MacNeil. “But it’s nice to get that out of way and hopefully tomorrow I also have something in the 100m fly as well.”

Going gold-silver with backstroke specialist Kylie Masse in the dash only added to Canada’s brilliant day. Already having historic short course world champs, MacNeil noted that coach Ben Titley kept the teams under pressure. 

“He told us we hadn’t even lost a heat so far, so the pressure was on in the fly and in the backstroke, but now at least half of that is over.” 

By then Canada could already celebrate gold in the first individual final of the session, the women’s 200m Individual Medley. Later, at the end of the evening, their 4x200m Freestyle Relay almost brought down another world record. While grabbing their third title of the day they were just 0.11sec shy of the Netherlands’ winning time, a record from 2014 that still stands intact for another day.

In the 200m Individual Medley final, Sydney Pickrem wasn’t even sure a week ago she wanted to compete here. She was overtired from the many competitions, but her coach convinced her to come to Abu Dhabi and then apply a day-by-day approach. It worked and the Canadian opted to go for the 200m Individual Medley – an adventure that ended as a first-ever world title for Pickrem.

The happy ending, though, didn’t come easy. 

“Emotionally this has been the hardest year of my life, of my swimming career probably” Pickem recalled. “A week ago, I called Ben (coach) and told him I just couldn’t do it. I didn’t really want to come here. He said, ‘Look, get to Abu Dhabi and we’ll talk.’ And he told me if I just wanted to do relays, then I’d do relays and I was like, ‘God, I don’t want to think of the 200m IM yet. Days came and went, and yesterday he asked if I wanted to do it and I said ‘Yeah!’ Obviously, I’m really glad that I did.”

Daiya Seto had other kinds of problems. At certain stages this year the Japanese king of the medley might have felt his world was in ruins. This led to further disappointments in the summer. He was the reigning world champion in both Individual Medley events coming into Tokyo. But racing in his home Olympics, he failed badly. In Tokyo, he missed the 400m IM final by 0.32sec to ninth. Then Seto missed the podium in the 200m by 0.05sec to finish fourth. It was clear the Seto was all saw at these past Summer Games had not recovered from the shocks he had gone through earlier.

But Seto is not the kind of person who gives in. He bounced back and here in Abu Dhabi he just doubled down on the Individual Medley events to become the first one to achieve this double since USA’s Ryan Lochte was rolling in 2010 (also here in the Emirates, just 120km away in Dubai). Seto also tied GB’s James Hickman’s record of winning the same event five times as Seto won the 400m at each edition since 2012.

“My season didn’t go that well. You know that, so for me, it was a new and really inspiring experience to train in the United States even if it didn’t last that long until now, but I can’t wait to go back,” Seto lamented. “Because of the strict quarantine rules, the Japanese team stayed at home, no one wanted to risk its preparations before next year’s world championships in Fukuoka. I said, ‘I wanted to come.’ I wanted to take the risk and I should say now that it was worth it, even at the cost of staying at home in the next two weeks. 

“These victories did good to my soul, gave me a push which will bring me until the world championships and even beyond, until Paris 2024.”

As for other happenings, the session kicked off by a men’s 4x50m medley relay thriller that ended in a tie as the Russian Swimming Federation and the USA quartet shared the gold. 

Nothing separated them at the wall with both clocking 1:30.51 to share a new Championships Record – and an American record by the USA. It was the second relay where we had two winners with identical times: in the women’s 4x100m Freestyle, Canada and the USA also shared the top step of the podium.

The women’s 100m Breaststroke also saw a very close call as China’s Tang Qianting out-touched Sweden’s Sophie Hansson by 0.03sec for the title, the gap was 0.03sec.

The future stars also made their marks. We saw no less than three new junior world records this evening. Two of those came with a silver medal to the teenage prodigies: Russian Swimming Federation’s Ilia Borodin almost caught Seto in the 400m IM final –
gaining 1.7 sec on the Japanese in the last 50m! 

Borodin’s 3:56.47 world junior mark was just 0.21sec shy of the winning effort. He also recorded a new senior European record, taking down the old top European mark of the legendary Laszlo Cseh set in 2009. 

China’s Yu Yiting finished only 0.19sec behind Pickrem while clocking 2:04.48 and the USA’s Claire Curzan equalled the World Junior Record of 55.64 in the 100m Butterfly semifinals. 

More to come on the last day of the 15th FINA World Swimming Championships – and much, much more from these outstanding talents in the coming years.