Hwang Sun-woo is the first Korean to earn a silver medal in the men's 200-m freestyle in the world swimming championships.
At Duna Arena in Budapest, Hungary, the swimmer on June 20 had a time of 1:44.47 in the final to win second place at the FINA World Championships.
This time is 0.15 seconds faster than what Hwang posted (1:44.62) in the preliminaries of the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics last year, thus setting a Korean record.
Hwang was in the third lane and got off to a good start, taking off the earliest at 0.61 seconds.
He was in third to fourth place through 150 m, and saw explosive acceleration in the last 50 m to finish second.
The gold went to David Popovici from Romania (1:43.21) and the bronze to Tom Dean from the U.K. (1:44.98).
Hwang is the first Korean to earn a medal in the world championships since 2011, when Park Tae-hwan won the gold in the men's 400-m freestyle in Shanghai, China. Hwang's silver is also Korea's first in the men's 200-m freestyle since 2007, when Park took bronze in Melbourne, Australia.
