Ward Bauwens (born 4 May 1993 in Leuven) is a Belgian swimmer, who specialized in individual medley events. Bauwens is a resident athlete for Brabo Antwerp, and currently, a medicine student at the

University of Antwerp The University of Antwerp ( nl, Universiteit Antwerpen) is a major Belgian university located in the city of Antwerp. The official abbreviation is ''UA'', but ''UAntwerpen'' is more recently used. The University of Antwerp has about 20,000 stud ...

. Before his Olympic debut, Bauwens broke his own 400 IM record several times. On 16 March 2012 he posted a time of 4:19.55 to blast a 16-year-old record (4:19.82), held by

Stefaan Maene Stefaan Maene (born 13 May 1972 in Ostend) is a former backstroke, freestyle and medley swimmer from Belgium, who competed for his native country at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain. He won his first international medal at the inaugur ...

since 1995, at the Belgian Championships in Antwerp. Bauwens qualified for the men's 400 m individual medley, by clearing a 4:19 barrier, and eclipsing a FINA B-cut of 4:18.24 from the European Championships in

Debrecen, Hungary Debrecen ( , is Hungary's second-largest city, after Budapest, the regional centre of the Northern Great Plain region and the seat of Hajdú-Bihar County. A city with county rights, it was the largest Hungarian city in the 18th century and i ...

. He surged past Luxembourg's Raphaël Stacchiotti with a freestyle kick to top the second heat by 0.49 of a second, breaking his own Belgian record of 4:16.71. Bauwens failed to advance into the final, as he placed sixteenth overall on the first day of the preliminaries.

References

External links

NBC Olympics Profile
* 1993 births Living people Belgian male medley swimmers Olympic swimmers for Belgium Swimmers at the 2012 Summer Olympics Sportspeople from Leuven 21st-century Belgian people {{Belgium-swimming-bio-stub