T&T’s Dy­lan Carter low­ered his per­son­al best and na­tion­al record for the sec­ond time on the day, but it was still not enough to book a spot in his sec­ond fi­nal, the men’s 100m freestyle on the fourth day of the FI­NA World Long Course Cham­pi­onships at the Duna Are­na in Bu­dapest, Hun­gary on Tues­day.

Com­ing off a near-miss in the men’s 50m but­ter­fly fi­nal on Sun­day, in which he placed fourth in a star-stud­ded field in a na­tion­al record swim, Carter, 26, swim­ming from lane sev­en was eighth in the sec­ond of two semi­fi­nals in 48.30 sec­onds for 14th spot over­all of the 16 semi­fi­nal­ists.

Win­ning Carter’s semi­fi­nal heat was 17-year-old Ro­man­ian David Popovi­ci, who dropped a per­son­al best time and new World Ju­nior Record in clock­ing 47.13 to be­come the ninth-fastest swim­mer in his­to­ry.

Popovi­ci set his pre­vi­ous best time of 47.30 at the 2021 Eu­ro­pean Ju­nior Cham­pi­onships in Rome and was sev­enth in this event at the Olympics last year, but won a de­ci­sive gold medal on Mon­day night in the men’s 200 free.

Touch­ing be­hind Popovi­ci in the sec­ond semi­fi­nal was 19-year-old Cana­di­an Josh Lien­do, who broke 48 sec­onds for the first time, in 47.55 to qual­i­fy third in­to the fi­nal, crush­ing his pre­vi­ous best of 48.13 while Great Britain’s Lewis Bur­ras set a new Na­tion­al Record of 47.63 for the third spot, oblit­er­at­ing Dun­can Scott’s British mark of 47.87, and Chi­na’s Pan Zhan­le matched the Chi­nese Record in 47.65 for fourth spot with Ital­ian Alessan­dro Mires­si (47.89) and USA’s Cur­ry Brooks (47.90) al­so ad­vanc­ing to the gold medal swim from the sec­ond heat with an­oth­er Ital­ian Loren­zo Zazzeri and Hun­gary’s Nan­dor Nemeth, the sec­ond-placed fin­ish­er from semi­fi­nal heat one both clock­ing 47.96 set­ting up a swim-off to de­ter­mine the last qual­i­fi­er to the fi­nal.

French­man Maxime Grous­set neared his life­time best in the first se­mi, touch­ing first in 47.54 to ul­ti­mate­ly ad­vance sec­ond over­all. Grous­set set a PB of 47.52 at the Olympics in 2021.

The oth­er fin­ish­ers in heat one were Ser­bian An­drej Bar­na (47.97), Ko­rea’s Hwang Sun­woo (48.08), Great Britain’s Ja­cob Whit­tle (48.19), Hun­gary’s Sze­baszt­ian Sz­abo (48.19), Aruban Mikel Schreud­ers (48.73) and Cana­da’s Rus­lan Gaziev.

Be­fore the semi­fi­nals, reign­ing two-time world cham­pi­on, USA’s Caeleb Dres­sel opt­ed out of de­fend­ing his ti­tle in the men’s 100 freestyle as a late scratch, ap­pear­ing on the ini­tial ver­sion of the heat sheet but then miss­ing min­utes lat­er once it was re­vised due to med­ical rea­sons.

Dres­sel, 25, has won the event at the last two World Cham­pi­onships along with the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games and is the on­ly swim­mer in his­to­ry to break 47 sec­onds in a tex­tile suit.

Hwang tied with Aus­tralia’s Zac In­cer­ti, though it ap­pears In­cer­ti scratched to avoid a swim-off for the first al­ter­nate. In­cer­ti was deal­ing with an ill­ness ear­li­er that kept him off the Aussie 400 free re­lay.

In the morn­ing pre­lim­i­nary heats, Carter com­pet­ed from lane one of ten in heat ten of 11 against and clocked a then-new per­son­al best and na­tion­al record of 48.40 for sixth in the heat and joint 11th-fastest over­all with Schreud­ers who was the win­ner of heat eight in a na­tion­al record mark as well.

Carter al­so broke his own record from the 2019 World Cham­pi­onships (48.52), where he placed 12th by .12 sec­onds, af­ter he placed 16th in the heats in 48.77 to qual­i­fy for the semi­fi­nals, while Schreud­ers beat his own record from the 2019 Pan Amer­i­can Games by .68, putting the record be­low 49.00 for the first time.

Fin­ish­ing ahead of Carter in heat ten were Popovi­ci (47.60), the top time over­all, Bar­na (48.15), Lien­do (48.16), Zazzeri (48.29), and Nemeth (48.33) while Gaziev (48.49) was joint-14th and al­so made the semis.

On Sun­day, Carter, placed fourth in the men’s 50m but­ter­fly fi­nal in a new na­tion­al record time of 22.85 sec­onds from lane sev­en, his third straight swim un­der the 23 sec­onds mark in two days which bet­tered his pre­vi­ous record swim of 22.87 which he es­tab­lished in top­ping the list of qual­i­fiers in the heats on Sat­ur­day.

Carter will have one more shot at join­ing Olympic medal­list George Bovell III as World Long Course medal win­ner when he com­petes on Thurs­day in the 50 me­tres freestyle.

Al­so on Fri­day from 3.14 am (T&T time), T&T’s Cherelle Thomp­son, who left here yes­ter­day, will line up in the women’s 50m freestyle heat sev­en of ten from lane 6.