South Korea's Hwang Sun-woo advanced to the final in the 200-meter freestyle at the swimming world championships in Japan on Monday, keeping alive a bid for his second straight medal in the event.
With a time of 1:45.07, Hwang finished third among 16 swimmers in the semifinals of the World Aquatics Championships in the port city of Fukuoka, with the top eight headed to Tuesday's final.
Hwang won silver in the 200m freestyle at last year's world championships in Budapest. The 20-year-old is trying to become the first South Korean swimmer to win medals at back-to-back world championships.
Only Park Tae-hwan, the 2007 and 2011 champion in the men's 400m freestyle, has won multiple world championships medals for South Korea so far.
Hwang almost didn't even make it to the semifinals. In the heats held earlier Monday, Hwang clocked 1:46.69 to tie two others for 13th place, finishing only one-hundredth of a second ahead of the 16th and final qualifier, Antonio Djakovic of Switzerland.
Hwang had said after the heats that he wasn't going to pace himself in the semifinals, and he lived up to his words. Hwang had the fastest reaction time in his group at 0.63 second and posted the fastest splits at every turn to cruise to the top of his field.
The reigning world champion from Romania, David Popovici, won the next group and the semifinals overall with a time of 1:44.70, followed by Luke Hobson of the United States at 1:44.87.
One other South Korean, Lee Ho-joon, finished sixth in the semifinals in 1:45.93.
Hwang and Lee are the first pair of South Korean teammates to advance to a world championships final together.
Source: Yonhap News Agency