Personal information | |
---|---|
Full name | Wickus Nienaber |
National team | Swaziland |
Born | Manzini, Swaziland | 24 June 1981
Height | 1.91 m (6 ft 3 in) |
Weight | 85 kg (187 lb) |
Sport | |
Sport | Swimming |
Strokes | Breaststroke |
College team | Florida State University (U.S.) |
Coach | Neil Harper (U.S.) |
Wickus Nienaber (born June 24, 1981) is a former Swazi swimmer, who specialized in breaststroke events. [1] He is a four-time College Swimmer of the Year, a 2004 Atlantic Coast Conference champion, and owns at least 40 national age group records for the same stroke in Swaziland. [2] He was a member of the swimming team for Florida State Seminoles under his coach Neil Harper, and a graduate with a Doctorate in computer science at the Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida. [3]
Nienaber made his first Swazi team at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, where he competed in the men's 100 m breaststroke. Swimming in heat three, he touched out Namibia's Jorg Lindemeier to take a third spot and forty-seventh overall by 0.27 of a second in 1:04.98. [4]
At the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Nienaber qualified again for the men's 100 m breaststroke by eclipsing a FINA B-standard entry time of 1:04.22 from the FINA World Championships in Barcelona, Spain. [5] [6] He challenged seven other swimmers on the fourth heat, including Olympic veterans Ratapong Sirisanont of Thailand, Malick Fall of Senegal, and Jakob Jóhann Sveinsson of Iceland. He raced to sixth place by 0.03 of a second behind Barbados' Bradley Ally in 1:04.74. Nienaber failed to advance into the semifinals, as he placed forty-second overall on the first day of preliminaries. [7] [8]
Yuliya Andreyevna Yefimova is a Russian competitive swimmer. She is the Russian record holder in the 200 metre individual medley, 50 metre breaststroke, 100 metre breaststroke, and 200 metre breaststroke. After making her Olympic debut in 2008, she went on to win the bronze medal in the 200 metre breaststroke in 2012, and silver medals in the 100 metre and 200 metre breaststroke in 2016. She is a six-time World Champion, winning the 50 metre breaststroke in 2009 and 2013, the 100 metre breaststroke in 2015, and the 200 metre breaststroke in 2013, 2017, and 2019. In 2019, she became the first woman to win the 200 metre breaststroke at a FINA World Aquatics Championships three times. She is a former world record holder in the long course 50 metre breaststroke. She has won 109 medals, including 48 gold medals, at Swimming World Cups.
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Andrei Capitanciuc is a Moldovan former swimmer, who specialized in breaststroke events. Capitanciuc qualified for the men's 100 m breaststroke at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, by achieving a FINA B-standard of 1:04.98 from the Russian Open Championships in Moscow. He challenged seven other swimmers in heat two, including three-time Olympians Jean Luc Razakarivony of Madagascar and Yevgeny Petrashov of Kyrgyzstan. He shared a second seed with Saudi Arabia's Ahmed Al-Kudmani in a time of 1:05.65. Capitanciuc failed to advance into the semifinals, as he placed forty-seventh overall out of 60 swimmers on the first day of preliminaries.
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Brett Petersen is a South African former swimmer, who specialised in breaststroke events. He won a gold medal in the 100 m breaststroke at the 1999 All-Africa Games, and later became a top 8 finalist in the same distance at the 2000 Summer Olympics. While studying in the United States, Petersen was part of the 200-yard medley relay team that claimed a top finish at the 1998 Atlantic Coast Conference Swimming Championships. Petersen also played for the Florida State Seminoles swimming and diving team under head coach Neil Harper, and later became a graduate of management information systems at the Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida.
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