Joseph Schooling, the Olympic champion, won a joint bronze medal at the 100m men's butterfly final with a timing of 50.83s at the FINA World Championships on Sunday (Singapore time).
The event was won by American Caeleb Dressel, who scored a timing of 49.86s, which is just 0.04s short of the world record set by Michael Phelps in 2009. The silver medal was bagged by Kristof Milak from Hungary with a timing of 50.62s. James Guy from the UK tied with Schooling at third place.
"It was an unbelievably fast race, Caeleb was amazing, the Hungarian kid came from nowhere with an incredible time," Schooling told Channel NewsAsia. "The next three or four years are going to be really interesting between the four of us."
Schooling clocked 50.78s at the semi-finals held at the Duna Arena in Budapest, Hungary on Saturday to finish 4th overall. The 22-year-old swimmer also came in 4th in the heats on Friday, clocking 51.21s.
After Schooling finished fifth in the 50m butterfly final, the 100m butterfly was his final shot at gold at the championships. The Singaporean swimmer failed to make the semi-finals of the 100m freestyle.
Schooling was one of the favourites to win the event after he won the historic gold medal for Singapore at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games.
