Popovici, the boy who is already a legend: smashes the 100-meter freestyle record

• David Popovici The perfect physiology for swimming and a unique style: "It's like Curry shooting a triple"

It was sensed, it was expected, the world record of the 100 meter freestyle was desired.

And the intuitions, the hopes and the desires were amply fulfilled.

David Popovici, that extraterrestrial, that "extra-aquatic" 17-year-old Romanian, stopped the shaken and astonished time in 46.86.

He broke the barrier of 46.90, which the sentimental Brazilian

(46.91) had peeked out of, with a plastic swimsuit in, also, Rome, in the distant 2009.

Popovici had done on Friday, in the semifinals, 46.98, thus becoming the third swimmer in history, after Cielo and the American phenomenon

(46.96), to go below 47.00 (the 46.94 of the Frenchman

were invalidated in his moment).

It was a European record.

He was far better than the 47.11 that Russian

had set at the Tokyo Games.

The world record was announced with all kinds of pronouncements.

And so it happened.

Frenchman

passed in first place for the 50 meters.

But, in a wild 50 seconds, Popovici shredded the distance, as if shrinking for him while lengthening for the others, who seemed to recede as he soared over the foam.

And... world record.

The Romanian, very thin, sharp, schematic, a pointed amphibious animal, achieves a mark of immense value that, in all probability, only he will be able to improve.

He has interposed between his person and his rivals an insurmountable border.

The prodigious Hungarian

was far away with his 47.47.

And even more the Italian

and his 47.63.

Objectively magnificent markings, but obscured, by comparison, with Popovici's.

It would not be an exaggeration to compare this 46.86 to

's 9.58 in the 100 meter dash.

Popovici has opened a new chronometric era in which, in principle, only he is in a position to inhabit while he explores it to as yet unknown limits.

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