Evgeny Rylov

Career

Rylov first established himself on the world scene at the 2014 Summer Youth Olympics in Nanjing, China, where he achieved a total of four medals, three golds and one silver, and broke two junior world swimming records. In the boys' 100 m backstroke, Rylov shared the top prize with Italy's Simone Sabbioni in a matching time of 54.24 seconds. On August 20, he put up a sterling effort of 25.09 to crush the world junior record and pick up his second gold of the meet in the 50 m backstroke, touching out Greece's Apostolos Christou by 0.35 of a second. Less than an hour later, Rylov and his teammates Anton Chupkov, Aleksandr Sadovnikov, and Filipp Shopin led throughout the race to capture the 4×100 m medley relay title in a junior world-record breaking time of 3:38.02. On the final night of the Games, Rylov added a silver to his medal tally in the 200 m backstroke with a time of 1:57.08, losing the title and his chance of breaking another record to China's Li Guangyuan by 14-hundredths of a second.

When his nation Russia hosted the 2015 FINA World Championships in Kazan, Rylov charged his way to round out the podium with a third-place time of 1:54.60 in the 200 m backstroke. Earlier in the meet, Rylov also posted a time of 53.23 to place seventh in the finals of the 100 m backstroke, missing out the podium by more than half a second.

At the Russian Championships in April 2016, Rylov broke the European record in the 200 m backstroke with a time of 1:54.21.

At the World Championships in July 2017, Rylov broke the European record in the 200 m backstroke with a time of 1:53.61. defeating the reigning Olympic Gold Medalist Ryan Murphy (swimmer) in the process. The swim places Rylov as the sixth fastest man to ever swim the 200 m backstroke while only Aaron Piersol, Ryosuke Irie, Ryan Lochte, Mitch Larkin and Tyler Clary have swum faster.