Hungarian teen sensation Kristof Milak said Wednesday he was “honoured” to beat his hero Michael Phelps’s 200 metres butterfly world record and vowed to be even stronger at next year’s Tokyo Olympics.
After flirting with the American’s 10-year-old record all season, the 19-year-old overpowered defending champion Chad le Clos to become the first man to dip under one minute, 51 seconds in Phelps’s pet race.
Milak’s eye-popping time of 1:50.73 smashed Phelps’s 2009 world championship time by almost eight tenths of a second and was an astonishing three seconds faster than silver medallist Daiya Seto of Japan, with le Clos taking bronze.
“When I turned back and saw the time, all the pressure and tension left me,” said the baby-faced swimmer, whose eyes lit up when he looked up at the giant screen before le Clos swam across to embrace him. “All the joy just came out.”
