Barr impresses again to claim men’s top spot

 

The men’s overall race is currently held by American Luke Barr, who swam to a 51.05 to win the 100m IM on Thursday night. That swim puts him tied for 16th all-time as he took down two World champions Shaine Casas (51.59) and Finlay Knox (51.65).
 
Barr, who holds a full-time day job in Dallas, has made a huge step in his career since graduating from Indiana University, and has taken a new approach to swimming that has helped him balance his life.
 
“It's definitely a great feeling (winning), I try not to think about it too much,” Barr said. “Trying to still keep swimming it's, like, a fun thing I do on the side, rather than (the) main thing that I'm doing. Otherwise, it'll put too much pressure…So, I'm just enjoying it as it goes."
 
It was the second final of the day for Barr, who was second in the 100m Breaststroke at 56.42 to Russia’s Kirill Prigoda at 55.98.
 
“I was just trying to change my mentality after the 100 Breaststroke,” Barr said. “Forget, good and bad of what happened, and just get straight into that 100 IM and see if I can do the repeat.”
 
Prigoda dominated the 100m Breaststroke field that included three representatives of the all-time top ten and current and former world records. Caspar Corbeau, who was the first man to break 2:00 last year in the 200m, finished third at 56.50 while former long-course world record holder Qin Haiyang was fourth at 56.85.
 
Barr currently has 93.7 overall points through four racing days at this World Cup, holding a firm lead over South Africa’s World champ Pieter Coetze, who won the 200m Backstroke today at 1:49.32. Coetze is coming off a successful summer where he swept the Backstroke finals at the Commonwealth Games and neared the long-course world record in the 100m Backstroke.
 
Coetze’s time today was three tenths faster than what he did to win last week.
 
“I looked at the video, saw what I could improve,” Coetze said. “I think my strategy was a bit different this week. Went out a bit more conservative. So I'm just trying different things and hopefully over the next few weeks and months I can drop a lot from that time.
 
“I tried to focus on holding my stroke rate into the walls because I tend to slow down a little bit as I get to the walls.”