Yauhen Tsurkin

Who is Yauhen Tsurkin?

Yauhen Mikalaevich Tsurkin is a Belarusian swimmer, who specialized in sprint freestyle and butterfly events. He won a bronze medal in the 50 m butterfly at the 2012 European Aquatics Championships in Debrecen, Hungary, breaking a new Belarusian record time of 23.37 seconds.

Tsurkin qualified for the men's 100 m freestyle, as a member of the Belarusian swimming team, at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, by attaining a B-standard entry time of 49.62 seconds from the European Championships. He challenged seven other swimmers on the fourth heat, including British-born Paraguayan swimmer Benjamin Hockin. Tsurkin edged out sixth-place finisher Gabriel Melconian Alvez of Uruguay by fifteen hundredths of a second, outside his qualifying entry time of 50.53 seconds. Tsurkin failed to advance into the semfinals, as he placed thirty-fourth out of 60 swimmers in the preliminaries.

At the 2012 European Short Course Swimming Championships in Chartres, France, Tsurkin lowered his national record time to 22.73 seconds, but was barely out touched by France's Frédérick Bousquet for the final top seeding in the semifinals of the men's 50 m butterfly.