Pieter Coetzé swam 22.09 to win the men’s 50m backstroke final at the World Aquatics Swimming World Cup on Friday, breaking the 50m backstroke world record and becoming the first man under 22.10. The 22-year-old from Pretoria took 0.02 off the 22.11 Kliment Kolesnikov swam in November 2022, and the swim carries a $10,000 record bonus.
The record is a short-course mark, swum in a 25m pool, where world records are kept on a separate list from the 50m-pool times swum at the Olympics and the long-course World Championships. Coetzé is already the long-course world champion over 100m backstroke, but this is the first individual world record of his career.
Second At The Turn, First At The Wall
Coetzé went off the blocks in 0.59 and turned second in 10.92, eight hundredths behind Egor Kornev, who had the fastest first length of the field in 10.84. The race turned on the second 25m. Coetzé came home in 11.17 to Kornev’s 11.45, a full 0.28 quicker over the back half, and finished 0.20 clear.
Kolesnikov was in the pool for the swim that took his record away. He touched sixth in 22.88.
The Final Result
- 🥇 Pieter Coetzé (RSA) — 22.09 (world record)
- 🥈 Egor Kornev (RUS) — 22.29
- 🥉 Pavel Samusenko (RUS) — 22.35
- Ralf Tribuntsov (EST) — 22.72
- Isaac Cooper (AUS) — 22.75
- Kliment Kolesnikov (RUS) — 22.88
What Was The Old 50m Backstroke World Record?
Kolesnikov set 22.11 in Kazan on 23 November 2022, and nobody had beaten it in the three years and ten months since. His swim ended Florent Manaudou’s eight-year run at 22.22, and the event had never had a man inside 22.10 until Friday.
The all-time short-course list now reads:
- Pieter Coetzé (RSA) — 22.09, 2026
- Kliment Kolesnikov (RUS) — 22.11, 2022
- Florent Manaudou (FRA) — 22.22, 2014
- Egor Kornev (RUS) — 22.23, 2026
Coetzé also held the African record going into the race, having swum 22.51 for silver at the opening stop of the series in Baku the week before, behind Kornev’s 22.23. The 22.09 is 0.42 faster than anything he had swum in the event before. He lowered his African short-course record over 100m backstroke in Baku too, to 49.11, taking 0.24 off the 49.35 he swam in Shanghai in October 2024.
SwimSwam reported that he is the only current swimming world-record holder from Africa.
The event he now owns is not yet on the Olympic programme. The men’s 50m backstroke debuts at Los Angeles 2028 alongside the 50m butterfly and the 50m breaststroke, which gives Coetzé a third individual event to go with the 100 and 200 he swam in Paris, where he finished fifth in the 100m backstroke and seventh in the 200m. He went to Tokyo as a 17-year-old and placed 24th in the 100m backstroke, having booked the place at the South African nationals in April 2021, a month before his 17th birthday.
Pieter Coetzé’s Silk Road Tour So Far
Tashkent is stop two of three on the Silk Road Tour, the 2026 World Cup circuit that leads into the short-course World Championships in Beijing from 1 to 6 December. Coetzé had already won the 200m backstroke in Tashkent the night before in 1:49.32, and he arrived from Baku with gold in the 100m and 200m backstroke, silver in the 50m backstroke and bronze in the 100m individual medley. A Triple Crown, winning the same event at all three stops, is worth another $10,000.
The 1.97m backstroker goes to Beijing with a full set of long-course world medals from Singapore 2025 behind him, where he won the 100m in 51.85 and took silver in the 50m and the 200m, and with Commonwealth gold in all three backstrokes from Glasgow 2026, the 200m in a Games record 1:54.22.
The time still goes to World Aquatics for ratification, as every new mark does, but the Omega timing and the reporting from SwimSwam, EFE, Marca and NBC Olympics all carry the same figure. The series ends in Astana from 15 to 17 October.
