The second leg of the FINA Swimming World Cup 2018 concluded Sept.15 at the Hamad Aquatic Centre in Doha (QAT).

The first final of the last day was the men’s 400m individual medley, where the Hungarian David Verraszto won the gold and established a new world cup record in a time of 4:13.44. The silver medal went to Maksym Shemberev from Azerbaijan with 4:13.61, and the bronze was for Tomas Peribnio Avila from Ecuador in 4:17.02.

Maksym Shemberev broke his Azerbaijani National Record in 4:13.61, lowering his old standard of 4:14.77, and Tom Peribonio improved his Ecuadorian Record by a few tenths in 4:17.02, SwimSwam reported.

Verraszto went head-to-head with Shemberev for the second straight night, as Shemberev had beaten him by a quarter of a second to win the 200 fly on day 2.

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Tonight, the 30-year-old Verraszto established the lead on the backstroke leg, and despite a solid 1:10.78 breaststroke split, lost some ground to Shemberev (1:08.90), but still went into the freestyle with a lead in excess of a second and a half.

Shemberev closed with a massive 57.85 on the freestyle, but Verraszto managed to fend him off with a 59.26 split to touch in 4:13.44 to Shemberev’s 4:13.61. Peribonio was in the hunt the whole way, losing a bit of ground on the free to finish a few seconds back in 3rd. An interesting note on Shemberev’s race, his back-half (2:06.75) was actually faster than the world record back-half of Michael Phelps (2:07.35).

Verraszto also won the first stop in Kazan, but with a lack of competition, cruised to the gold in a much slower 4:20.68.