Lewis Clareburt was seventh at the halfway point of the men’s 200 metre butterfly final in Glasgow, nearly a second and a half adrift of the lead, and to anyone watching he looked beaten. One length later he was Commonwealth champion again, and New Zealand had its first gold medal of the 2026 Games.
The 27-year-old Wellingtonian touched in 1min 55.05s in a final that ran just after 8am New Zealand time on Tuesday, running down Australia’s Harrison Turner, who had led for 150 metres and settled for silver in 1min 55.38s. A second Australian, Matthew Temple, took bronze in 1min 55.45s. Clareburt was the only swimmer in the field to cover the last 50 metres in under 30 seconds, and he needed every stroke of it to get there.
“I thought I was out of that race the whole time,” Clareburt told RNZ afterwards. “I knew from four years ago the last 50 is anyone’s race, so had the energy at the right time.”
He was as surprised as the commentators. “I felt like I could run through a brick wall,” he said. “I didn’t expect to win that race.”
The reference to four years ago is not idle. Clareburt won this same event at Birmingham in 2022, and he won it the same way, sitting back through the first three lengths before overhauling South African great Chad le Clos, who had won the title at the previous three Games. Butterfly punishes swimmers who go out hard, and Clareburt has built a career on being the one who still has something left when the rest of the field is folding. Turner led the race for three quarters of it and never got to enjoy it.
Clareburt qualified second fastest for the final and was not among the favourites for the win. The Australians had two swimmers in the field and both of them ended up on the podium. Sitting seventh at 100 metres, more than a body length off the pace, is not a plan so much as a gamble that the last 50 metres will hurt everyone else more than it hurts you. This time it paid.
The gold is his second medal of these Games. He took silver in the 200 metre individual medley earlier in the programme, which is an improvement on the bronze he won in that event at Birmingham. He is not finished either. The 400 metre individual medley final is on Wednesday, and that is the other title he brought to Glasgow as defending champion, having won it in Birmingham in a Games record of 4min 08.70s. The 400 medley has been his best event for most of his career, and winning it again would mean he had held on to both of the titles he took to Glasgow.
It was a good session all round for the New Zealand swimming team. The women’s 4×200 metre freestyle relay quartet of Erika Fairweather, Caitlin Deans, Eve Thomas and Milana Tapper took bronze behind Australia and England, adding to what has already been a heavily decorated week for Fairweather. Para swimmer Josh Willmer was promoted from third to second in the men’s 100 metre breaststroke SB9 after Canada’s Fernando Lu was disqualified, and his time of 1min 11.44s stands as a Games record for the classification.
That leaves New Zealand with eight medals from the first four days of competition, made up of one gold, four silver and three bronze, and every single one of them has come out of the pool. That is a lopsided medal table by any measure, and it reflects both the strength of the current swimming squad and the fact that several of New Zealand’s other medal prospects have not started yet. It has not been a flawless week outside the pool. High jumper Hamish Kerr, the reigning Olympic champion and one of the country’s genuine gold medal chances on the track, withdrew from the Games before competing, saying he was worn out and not ready to perform.
Clareburt’s own path to Glasgow has not been a straight line. He announced himself with a bronze in the 400 metre individual medley at the 2019 world championships in Gwangju as a 20-year-old, then took bronze in the same event at the 2018 Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast. He finished seventh in the 400 medley at the Tokyo Olympics and sixth in Paris, results that were solid without ever quite converting into the Olympic final swim he wanted. In between he won the 400 medley world title in Doha in 2024, at a championship many of the world’s leading swimmers sat out because it fell in an Olympic year, but a world title all the same.
He also made a significant change midway through, leaving the Wellington programme where he had been coached by Gary Hollywood since he was eight and shifting north to train in Auckland under Mitch Nairn from 2023. Splitting with a coach of 16 years is not a decision any swimmer takes lightly, and the two Commonwealth titles he is now chasing to defend in Glasgow are the clearest evidence yet that the move worked.
For a small swimming nation that measures itself in relay lane draws and touch pad margins, a gold that arrives by three tenths of a second after a 50 metre chase is about as good as it gets. New Zealand supporters who had gone to bed expecting nothing much from a Tuesday morning heat schedule woke up to the national anthem.
What did you make of Clareburt’s finish, and can he back it up in the 400 medley on Wednesday? Let us know in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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