Coetzé breaks world record at Swimming World Cup in Uzbekistan
Pretoria swimming superstar Pieter Coetzé once again demonstrated why he is considered a potential future Olympic champion this past weekend when he set his first world record at the Aquatics Swimming World Cup in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
After coming close to the 100m backstroke record in long course at the Commonwealth Games, South Africa’s Pieter Coetzé finally broke through for his first career world record this past weekend at the Aquatics Swimming World Cup event in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, as he swam 22.09 in the 50m Backstroke.
This time eclipses Kliment Kolenikov’s 22.11 from 2022 and lowers his own best time that he swam last week at 22.51.
“Seeing that time on the board, it didn’t even click that it was a world record and then, like, a second later, reality set in and I realized I had a new record. So, not many words to describe that. It’s crazy,” Coetzé said after his achievement.
Coetzé out-raced a stacked field that included Russians Egor Kornev and Pavel Samusenko, as well as World Record holder Kolesnikov. Kornev was actually ahead of world record pace at the 25m mark, but miss-timed his finish and finished second at 22.29 while Samusenko was third at 22.35.
Photo: World Aquatics
Kolesnikov was hardly a factor and finished sixth at 22.88.
Coetzé, age 22, is having the best year of his career. After winning the 100m backstroke world title in 2025, he gave the world record a scare at the Commonwealth Games earlier this summer, swimming 51.7 twice in Glasgow. Now he officially has ‘world record holder’ attached to his name, which will keep a target on his back for the World Cup’s final stop this week in Kazakhstan.
“I don’t think it changes much. My mind-set normally stays the same, no matter what the race is, because, you know, at this level everyone is always close. I mean, the world record holder was there and look how close it was. So, no, you can never get too comfortable. I’ll just keep doing the same,” he remarked. Coetze’s swim is also the first official world record by itself on this Silk Road Tour. Last week, Russia’s Kornev tied the 100m freestyle world record, but didn’t take it down completely.
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