Two hundredths of a second: Coetze tears through the 50m backstroke world record

Pieter Coetze hit the wall in Tashkent and stared at the clock in disbelief: 22.09 seconds. The South African had just erased a four-year-old world record in the 50m backstroke at the World Aquatics World Cup, shaving 0.02 seconds off the mark Russia's Kliment Kolesnikov set in Kazan in 2022. Two hundredths of a second — the smallest unit of glory in swimming — now belong to him.