Matti Mattsson swam to an overwhelming victory in the 200 meter breaststroke semi-finals. The Finnish swimmer, who goes into the final as the favorite, still has room to tighten his grip when the EC medals are decided in Rome on Sunday evening.
20:56•Updated 21:14
shows all the morning and evening competitions of the European Swimming Championships in Rome live in Areena. The men’s 200-meter breaststroke final will take place on Sunday at 20:01, broadcast on Areena and TV2.
Matti Mattsson advanced to the final of the 200-meter breaststroke at the long-distance European Championships with a time of 2:09.88. Mattsson was by far the fastest in the semifinals. Second, swim Italy Luca Pizzini with a time of 2:10.48, 0.60 seconds behind Mattsson. The semi-final swim in the competition pool in Rome went according to plan for the Finn.
– There’s still a little bit to improve on and maybe it can get harder, but it felt really good. A few times I looked at where the guys were going and I thought, “This isn’t going to be a riot yet,” Mattsson commented after his semi-final swim.
Especially in the first 100 meters, according to Mattsson, there is room to tighten up. The plan is to go to the semi-finals with a coach Eetu Karvonen with and refine the final tactics.
– Of course, you can still file a little off the first hundred. I thought that for the third fifty, I would go a little tighter, but then I didn’t bother. This was such a tactical bet.
A tough semi-final crunch increases a swimmer’s self-confidence. In the final, the most important thing is to keep a cool head and focus only on your own performance.
– Of course, tomorrow in the final, whoever can win and do hard times. It is by no means a foregone conclusion that a medal would come from there, but you have to go do your own work and focus on what you are doing, so I think it will be fine.
As the competition gets tougher, the Finnish record is also on Mattsson’s mind. The SE of the long course 200m breaststroke is Mattsson’s Tokyo Olympics final time of 2:07.13.
– There is still a long way to go, but of course they are always something to be desired and we will see that tomorrow. Let’s leave here to recover and towards tomorrow night.
– For this, we have trained hard and pushed ourselves for another year. Now it’s time to measure it out again.