Schooling: It’s a good wake-up call for me

He had dropped the men's 200m butterfly event at the Fina World Championships on Tuesday, presumably to conserve his energy for other events down the road.

Singapore swim star Joseph Schooling spent most of that day "chilling" in his hotel room in Budapest, Hungary, and even caught some of the water polo matches on television.

But, ironically, the rest day took a toll on the 22-year-old's performance in the men's 100m freestyle yesterday, as he missed out on a place in the semi-finals by a whisker.

Schooling clocked 48.86 seconds to finish fifth in his heat, and was ranked 17th overall.

Only the top 16 swimmers from 12 heats went through to the semi-finals last night (Singapore time).

The last qualifier, Serbia's Velimir Stjepanovic, clocked 48.80.

Schooling said after his race: "It is what is; I'll just focus on the 100m fly right now.

"I thought there were some positives from that, some negatives. But I'm not too worried, it's a good wake-up call and I'll be ready for the next swim."

The University of Texas undergraduate revealed that the rest day on Tuesday had affected his rhythm for the 100m free heats yesterday.

He said: "It was a pretty rough morning, I am not going to lie.

PRETTY ROUGH

"Having the day off, sitting in my hotel for 24 hours and first race after that, definitely felt pretty rough.

"It was kind of hard to get the wheels turning, I thought it was a pretty solid race, doing 48.8sec," added the butterfly specialist, who clocked the current national record of 48.27 in the heats at the Rio Olympics last year.

Schooling qualified for the semi-finals then, and finished 16th.

Yesterday, Australia's Cameron McEvoy topped with 47.97, followed by Frenchman Mehdy Metella (48.18) and American Caeleb Dressel (48.26).

The results of last night's semi-finals were not available at press time.

Earlier in the meet, Schooling competed in the men's 50m fly, where he finished fifth and lowered his Asian and national marks twice.

The 2016 Olympic 100m fly champion will close his 2017 Worlds campaign with his pet event tomorrow - and Saturday, if he makes the final - at the Danube Arena.

The swimmer, who clocked an Olympic record of 50.39 in Rio last year, is aiming to break Michael Phelps' world record of 49.82 in this event.

But first, he will have to manage another rest day today - he could have competed in the 100m free final tonight.

But the former Bolles School student was not worried.

He said: "This (the 100m fly) is the race I've been focusing on, so I'm pretty confident and pretty comfortable.

"I'm happy this race is coming up, it's what I've been anticipating the most and I think it'll be my best one.

"I'm pretty confident of that."