Ryk Neethling backs Chad le Clos to land butterfly double

Cape Town - Ryk Neethling has backed Chad le Clos to do the 100m / 200m butterfly double at the FINA World Championship in Budapest.

On Wednesday Le Clos picked up the gold medal in winning the 200m butterfly in a time of 1:53.33.

Le Clos will contest the 100m butterfly heats starting on Friday morning, with the semi-finals set for Friday evening and the final scheduled for Saturday night.

Le Clos, who ended outside the medals in the 200m butterfly at last year's Rio Olympics, memorably finished in a three-way tie for silver alongside American great Michael Phelps and Hungarian Laszlo Cseh in the 100m butterfly in Rio, with Singapore's Joseph Schooling swimming his way to the gold medal.

Neethling, who was part of the Olympic gold medal-winning SA 4x100m freestyle relay team in Athens in 2004, took to Twitter on Wednesday to back Le Clos to land the 'double'.

The 100 butterfly is going to be a great race. Olympic Champ Schooling seems a bit off his best. My money is on Chad to double his gold

— Ryk Neethling (@RykNeethling) July 26, 2017