Raphael Stacchiotti; Credit: FLNS

On the fourth day of the Swimming World Championships in South Korea, Luxembourg's Raphael Stacchiotti has qualified for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo.

Over the 200 metres individual medley, the 27-year-old broke through the two-minute barrier in 1:59.62 for the first time and qualified 14th for the semi-finals in the evening (21:30 local time). During this time, the sports soldier improved his previous national record (2:00.21) set in the games in 2016 in Rio de Janeiro and remained five hundredths under the A-standard for the Olympic Games in Tokyo.

"All the work has finally paid off. The most important thing was the A-standard, the semi-final is the bonus", Raphael stated, with tears in his eyes. The entire FLNS team congratulated him with great applause at the swimming pool and congratulated him on his fourth Olympic participation.

Shortly beforehand, Julien Henx was in action over 100m freestyle. With 24.36 seconds at the 50-metre turn, he was about half a second outside his national record (50.06) from the 2017 World Cup in Budapest. On the second length, he could not catch up and finished in 50.43 seconds as the fifth of his heat. "My start was very good, I took the tempo well into the turning point", he summed up the race. In the final ranking he finished 52nd out of 120 swimmers.