Taiwanese swimmer Wang Kuan-hung (???) placed 15th out of 16 athletes in the men's 200-meter butterfly semifinals at the Federation Internationale de Natation (FINA) World Championships in Budapest on Tuesday.
The 20-year-old Wang finished with a time of 1:56.23, trailing first place swimmer Kristof Milak of Hungary by 3.84 seconds.
Behind Milak's time of 1:52.39 was Tomoru Honda of Japan with 1:54.01, while the swimmers in 3rd to 16th place in the semifinals all finished between 1:54.20 and 1:56.45.
The top eight swimmers from the two semifinals will compete for the medals on Wednesday, according to the organizer FINA.
Swimming coach Huang Chih-yung (???) said Wang almost gave up on competing in Budapest after testing positive for COVID-19 in May and had little time to train before the start of this year's world championships after recovering.
Huang nevertheless complimented Wang for reaching the semifinals, adding that Wang is the first male Taiwanese swimmer to ever qualify for the semifinals at the FINA world championships.
The young Taiwanese competed in the Summer Olympics in Tokyo last year, but also failed to make it out of the men's 200m butterfly semifinals.
Wang represented the San Francisco-based Cali Condors team in the International Swimming League season in 2020.
The 19th FINA World Championships Budapest 2022 will run until July 3.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel