Lewis, Leon & The Perfect 200 Fly

28 July 2026

I had written a post last fall after I was particularly chuffed with my race execution and splits on a 200 fly I swam at Millfield School, where my 50 splits as a percentage of total time worked out to:

• 22.9% 25.8% 25.7% 25.5%

I was reminded of how beautiful a perfectly executed 200 fly can be as I watched Lewis Clareburt control his pace, be comfortable in his strategy, bide his time and appear to storm home the last 50 to win the 200 fly at last night's Commonwealth Games. See if you can find a full video of the race, but, if not, take a look at where he stood at the end of each lap and how consistent he was compared to the two Aussies who shot out ahead from the start:

His 50 splits as a percentage of the whole - 22.5%, 25.5%, 26.0%, 26.0%. While the Aussies had damn fine swims, I can (almost) guarantee you they felt a lot more pain that last 50, especially Mr. Turner.

That final was timely as I had planned to tackle a time & course adjusted version of this Fly Ladder set from Bob Bowman from his time coaching Leon Marchand at ASU (hat tip to Open Lane for bringing this to my attention):

I did this long course at the London Aquatics Centre and had to make some inferences from the picture above to adapt it for my speed. Here's what I changed:

• The biggest change, which is probably an incorrect assumption but was necessary for this aged man to survive, was to make the assumption that the name of the set implied that the freestyle was easy!

• Next, as I knew I'd be tight on time, I started each round with fly so that the last 8 x 50s free could be my cool-down.

• Then, to set the intervals, I assumed that Leon's 23 second fly average and 50 second interval implied a 1:1 work:rest ratio. As my ultimate target (though not for today) would be to average 35.5 on my flys, I set the fly interval at 1:10. Then I used 1:00 for the free interval.

My goal today was to make this while trying to keep my stroke count at 19-21 SPL and to create a baseline performance that I can work to improve upon.

I was blessed with largely sharing the lane with only one or two other swimmers, so I was generally able to stick precisely to the intervals. I was getting into my stroke on the first two, solid and confident on rounds 2 and 3, but then felt my technique starting to falter with fatigue on the last round, so I broke that one up a bit:

• 4 fly - 1 easy free

• 3 fly - 1 easy free

• Then I took an extra 1:00 rest and just tried to blast the last one, paying no attention to stroke count

That's a fun one! Highly recommended.