Serhiy Mykolaiovych Advena (Ukrainian:Сергій Миколайович Адвена; born August 4, 1984) is a Ukrainian former swimmer who specializes in the freestyle and butterfly swimming styles.[1] He is a two-time Olympian (2004 and 2008), and a multiple-time Ukrainian record holder in both 100 and 200 m butterfly. He also helped out the Ukrainian team to upset their American rivals and claim the medley relay title (3:38.49) at the2005 Summer Universiade inIzmir, Turkey.[2]
Advena made his Olympic debut inAthens 2004, competing in two swimming events. He also teamed up withMaksym Kokosha,Dmytro Vereitinov, and Olympic stalwartSerhiy Fesenko in the4 × 200 m freestyle relay. Swimming the anchor leg, Advena recorded a fastest split of 1:50.90, and the Ukrainian team went to finish the preliminary heats in twelfth overall, with a final time of 7:24.13.[3] In the200 m butterfly, Advena failed to qualify for the final, as he finished twelfth overall in his semifinal run in 1:58.11. His time was just two hundredths of a second (0.02s) ahead of Japan'sTakeshi Matsuda, who beat him for the gold medal at the2003 Summer Universiade inDaegu, South Korea.[4][5][6]
Four years after competing in his first Olympics, Advena qualified for his second Ukrainian team, as a 24-year-old, at the2008 Summer Olympics inBeijing. He finished sixth in the 200 m butterfly from theEuropean Championships inEindhoven, Netherlands, clearing a FINA A-standard entry time of 1:57.04.[7] On the second day of the Games, Advena challenged seven other swimmers in heat five of the200 m freestyle, including South Africa'sDarian Townsend and Israel'sNimrod Shapira Bar-Or. He cruised to third place by a single tenth margin from Townsend in a Ukrainian record time of 1:48.18, but missed the semifinals by a 0.37-second deficit, as he placed twenty-third overall in the preliminaries.[8] In the200 m butterfly, Advena posted a time of 1:56.24 to obtain a fourteenth seed on the morning prelims.[9][10] Then, he repeated his feat from Athens with a fifteenth-place time of 1:56.64 in the semifinals.[11]
Ukraine
