Olympian Chad Le Clos competed at the 2023 South African Championships which concluded over the weekend.

Over the course of the competition, 31-year-old Le Clos claimed titles across the 200m fly, 100m fly and 100m free with times as follows:

Splitting 24.83/26.54 in the 100m fly on his home soil, Le Clos beat out 19-year-old Matt Sates who settled for silver in 51.91. Both men dipped under the qualifying standard needed for this summers World Championships.

When all was said and done with several other international competitions taking place over the weekend, Le Clos highest world ranking of 7th at the moment rests with his 100m fly.

Reflecting on his RSA Championships results, Le Clos said, Im really happy with the week. I was a little nervous for some reason, Matt and I have these ding-dong battles in the final 10 metres and its always super-close.

Im delighted with the time and the result and now we try and win this race next year at the Olympic Games. Now Im confident I can win.

Tonight I was finessed, I was controlled, hit my strokes, hit the turn well and I thought he was coming so I just put my head down so Im over the moon. But now we push on to the Olympics theyve got a lot of trouble coming their way. Thats what I can promise you.

At the 2020 Olympic Games, Le Clos wound up placing 18th out of the 100m fly heats with a time of 51.89. The following year in Budapest, Le Clos dropped the event entirely before finishing 4th at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in 51.61.

Weve detailed, however, since then that Le Clos has been on the rebound after addressing mental health issues as well as changing up his coaching environment.

He ended the year with high notes in short course, topping both the 100m and 200m butterfly podium at the 2022 Short Course World Championships.

However, Le Clos 2.0 will indeed still have his work cut out for him to vie for gold in Paris 2024 in the long course 100 fly. He may be confident with his non-international performance but his lifetime best of 50.56 has already been surpassed by 4 active swimmers Caeleb Dressel(USA),Kristof Milak (HUN),Shaine Casas(USA) andMatt Temple (AUS).

The first two men in Japanese history have also now been under the 51-second threshold at non-Olympic meets already this season Naoki Mizunuma and Katsuhiro Matsumoto as a sign of how quickly this event has grown competitively worldwide.

Add to that the emerging Olympic-level talent in the form of Josh Liendo of Canada,Jacob Peters of Great Britain,Simon Bucher of Austria andDiogo Ribeiro of Portugal and Le Clos will need to produce something truly special to have his Paris in-pool performances match his positive outlook.

But, he does have time to prepare both mentally and physically, with Paris 2024 still over 450 days away.

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Le Clos 'Confident' He Can Win 100 Fly At 2024 Olympic Games - SwimSwam