Tatjana Schoenmaker can, for now at least, claim to be the world’s fastest female 200m breaststroke swimmer after yet again setting a new African record.

She won the event at the South African National Aquatic Championships in Port Elizabeth over the weekend in a time of 2:20.17.

It would seem there is no stopping the Tuks based swimmer at the moment. In three days, Schoenmaker had set two African records. Last week Wednesday, she won the 50m-breaststroke in 30.32s. It is also a world-leading time for now.

By swimming 2:20.17, Schoenmaker has qualified for the first time to compete at the Olympic Games.

It is hard to believe, but six years ago, no one really took note of Schoenmaker’s pool heroics and rightfully so. In 2016 her best time in the 200m-breaststroke was 2:26.50. It was only the 174th fastest that year.

But things would change dramatically over the next five years. In 2017 she swam 2:24.61 (58th fastest time); 2018 (2:22.02 – 6th fastest); 2019 (2:21.79 – 9th fastest) and 2021 (10th – 2:24.46).

The Tuks swimmer has basically been improving her times by one second each year to establish herself as one of the world’s best ever. Last night’s winning time of 2:20.17 is the joint 18th fastest on FINA’s all-time list. It is interesting to note that actually, only six swimmers had swum faster times.

Rikke Pedersen (Denmark) set the world record in 2013 swimming 2:19.11. Since 2016 only two swimmers had been faster than the golden girl from Pretoria. Japan’s Rie Kaneto clocked 2:19.65 in 2016 and Russia’s Yuliya Efimova 2:19.64 in 2017.

Schoenmaker has also steadily been improving 100m-breaststroke times. In 2017 she swam 1:07.44. It was only the 120th fastest time that year. In 2018 she improved her time to 1:06.41 (25th fastest), 2019 to 1:06.32 (16th fastest). Her current personal best time of 1:05.89 is the second fastest so far this season.

The Tuks swimmer’s progression in the 50m-event is equally impressive. In 2018 she swam 30.82s. Now her best time is 20.32s.

Her coach at TuksSwimming, Rocco Meiring, had been instrumental in guiding Schoenmaker to become the world-class swimmer she is. He is on a continuous quest to find ways to get her to be that hundredth of a second faster.

“My role is to help Tatjana unlock her full potential. The better she becomes, the bigger my challenge,” said a proud Meiring this past weekend.

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