Matthew Sates extended his stay in swimming’s purgatory at the world championships in Singapore after he failed to win a spot in the 200m individual medley semifinals on Wednesday.
The South African was once a hot prospect, tipped as the heir apparent to Chad Le Clos. In early 2022 he lifted a coveted NCAA title during a brief stint as a student in the US and the year before he won top male swimmer of the short-course World Cup series.
However, he has been off the boil for three years.
Sates raced in the final 200m individual medley heat on Wednesday, which contributed seven of the 16 semifinal contenders, topped by French Olympic superstar Leon Marchand, who clocked 1min 57.63sec.
However, the 22-year-old ended a distant ninth in 2:01.80, which ranked him 28th overall.
He was well outside the 1:57.43 South African record he set in May 2022.
Sates’ decline started soon after that as he failed to repeat his best times at the 2022 world championships in Budapest, though he made the 200m individual medley final there, finishing eighth in 1:58.27.
Then came the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham where he was unable to make a podium.
While he has occasionally shown flashes of his potential since, Sates has been unable to deliver when it counts.
He went faster at this year’s national championships than in Singapore. Last year he also slowed from the South African trials to the Paris Olympics.
At last year’s Games Sates couldn’t explain his lingering funk.
He’s been through three coaches in the past three years, including Rocco Meiring, the mentor of breaststroke star Tatjana Smith and newly crowned world 100m backstroke champion Pieter Coetzé.
Most recently Sates has been training in Switzerland alongside Noè Ponti, the 100m butterfly bronze medallist at the 2024 Games, but he has little to show for that.
On Wednesday Sates was more than two seconds faster than the 2:04.01 he managed at the Olympics, but that was hardly a signal of great things to come.
He went 25.46 in the opening butterfly leg, one of his two strongest strokes, and that was more than half a second slower than his best.
Even his freestyle, his other strong stroke, was substantially slower than his best.
On Monday he was also well off the pace in the 200m freestyle, again going slower than he did at the national gala.
World Student Games medallist Olivia Nel had to settle for sixth spot in her 50m backstroke heat on Wednesday morning, touching in 28.23.
The 27.91 personal best she clocked to secure bronze in the event at the Universiade eight days ago would have seen her into the night semifinals.
Even Coetzé was unable to match his golden 51.85 effort from Tuesday night in the mixed 4x100m medley relay heats, though his 53.01 was enough to give his teammates the lead.
However, that was quickly gobbled up as Kaylene Corbett, a 200m specialist, was overhauled in the breaststroke leg where most of the other teams opted for men.
The biggest gap between men’s and women’s 100m world records is in the breaststroke, at 7.25sec, some two seconds more than the others. Backstroke is 5.53, freestyle 5.31 and butterfly 5.15.
Statistically Corbett never stood a chance.
Erin Gallagher swam the third fly leg and Matthew Caldwell, a distance specialist, closed out the race on the freestyle leg with South Africa touching eighth in their heat and 18th overall in 3:52.03.
None of the four matched their personal bests, but even then it probably wouldn’t have got the team into the final.
The only South African in action on Wednesday night is 19-year-old Chris Smith in the 50m breaststroke final (2.03pm SA time).
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