Friday, 18 June 2010 05:29
Two seconds shaved off 400m IM record
Law student Kevin Paul is a man on a mission. Already the owner of the world record in all breaststroke races in the SM 10 category, Paul smashed the 400m individual medley World record on his first attempt at the German Championships in Berlin on Thursday 17 June, 2010.
The Paralympic gold medallist in the 100m Breaststroke touched the wall in 4:53.23 – taking 2 seconds off the previous record of 4:56.24 which stood behind the name of Canada’s Benoit Huot.
According to his father, Mervyn, Kevin’s coach had said the Paralympian had something special up his sleeve after looking at his training times. “This is about the 8th World Record Kevin has set in the last 18 months, but they were all in the various breaststroke distances. Brian Elliot (his coach), though was very optimistic about Kevin’s swimming and so they tried the 400m individual medley and it was a World Record.”
Paul is competing at the German Championships from Thursday 17 June until Sunday 20 June. His performance caught the eye of the German National team and they invited him to stay a further 3 days (Monday 21 June to Wednesday 23 June) for scientific testing.
“Swimming South Africa’s High Performance Manager Rushdee Warley helped us to get Kevin to Germany through the SASCOC OPEX programme”, said Marvyn. “We are greatly indebted to both Swimming SA and SASCOC for their efforts in helping us with Kevin. Without them he would now not be competing in Germany.”
Kevin is hard in training for the World Championships in the Netherlands in August.
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