Reigning Olympic 50m freestyle champion Florent Manaudou, a Barcelona gold medal already in his possession from the victorious French 4x100m freestyle relay, was eighth and last, a mere 0.34 seconds behind champion Cielo. World record holder Rafael Munoz (ESP) and 2005 and 2007 world champion Roland Schoeman (RSA) failed to make the final.

World Record: Rafael Munoz (ESP), 22:43 – April 5, 2009 in Malaga (ESP)
Championships Record: Milorad Cavic (SRB), 22.67 – July 27, 2009 in Rome (ITA)
Best performance of the current season (since January 2013): Nicholas Santos (BRA), 22.81 – July 28, in Barcelona (ESP)
2003-2011 winners in this event: 2003 – Matt Welsh (AUS, 23.43); 2005 – Roland Schoeman (RSA, 22.96); 2007 – Roland Schoeman (RSA, 23.18); 2009 – Milorad Cavic (SRB, 22.67); 2011 – Cesar Cielo (BRA, 23.10)
The best in this event (1. most victories or 2. fastest time): Roland Schoeman (RSA, 2005 & 2007)
Not in the Olympic programme

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QUOTES:

Gold medal winner: Cesar Cielo (BRA)

"It wasn't very easy after Olympics, mostly for 2 reasons: I did not get result that I wanted and I had a surgery in both of my knees. I'm now at 10 months after the surgery. I think for now, after this World Championships is over, we can have a decent break at least for us [the Brazilians] because we don't have anything big until the Pan Pacs and World Championships in short-course next year. I'm probably going to take a couple of weeks off after this and try to focus on getting back my knees to a 100%."

"To win this gold after this surgery is great because I could not push off the wall for 2 months, I started kicking again around March so it was a tough time. To be honest I am not feeling 100% because we did not have enough time to train but I'm feeling very fast."

Silver medal winner: Eugene Godsoe (USA)

"50 flys are very tough events, if you go truly 100% it's easy to swim too fast and a lot of people got too excited in the final."

"I just swam my race, I stayed very comfortable and did not worry about anything else."

Bronze medal winner: Fred Bousquet (FRA)

"In butterfly you need to hold on, let's say 98-99 % to actually do our best and that's I think what everybody did tonight. Everybody wanted to win this race and get faster, but it's a final so it's really hard."