Serhiy Advena

Serhiy Mykolaiovych Advena (Ukrainian: Сергій Миколайович Адвена; born August 4, 1984) is a Ukrainian former swimmer, who is specialized in 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 the 2005 Summer Universiade in Izmir, Turkey.[2]

Serhiy Advena

Personal information
Full name	Serhiy Mykolaiovych Advena
National team	Ukraine
Born	(1984-08-04) 4 August 1984 Kiev, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union
Height	1.90 m (6 ft 3 in)
Weight	82 kg (181 lb)
Sport
Sport	Swimming
Strokes	Freestyle, butterfly
Club	ZS Kiev
Medal record Men's swimming Representing Ukraine World Championships (SC) 2006 Shanghai 4×100 m medley Universiade 2005 Izmir 4×100 m medley 2003 Daegu 200 m butterfly 2005 Izmir 100 m butterfly European Junior Championships 2002 Linz 100 m butterfly 2002 Linz 200 m butterfly

Advena made his Olympic debut in Athens 2004, competing in two swimming events. He also teamed up with Maksym Kokosha, Dmytro Vereitinov, and Olympic stalwart Serhiy Fesenko in the 4 × 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 the 200 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's Takeshi Matsuda, who beat him for the gold medal at the 2003 Summer Universiade in Daegu, 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 the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. He finished sixth in the 200 m butterfly from the European Championships in Eindhoven, 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 the 200 m freestyle, including South Africa's Darian Townsend and Israel's Nimrod 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 the 200 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]