Michael Phelps won his first World Championship gold in Fukuoka, Japan, at the 2001 World Aquatics Championships. He captured the men’s 200-meter butterfly title on July 24, 2001.
Phelps was only 16 when he won. In the final, he lowered his own world record to 1:54.58, finishing ahead of fellow American Tom Malchow. The victory was especially significant because Phelps had finished fifth in the same event at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, his first Games.
Fukuoka can be confused with other major swimming-host cities, including Barcelona, Melbourne, and Montreal, but none of those was the location of this breakthrough. The 2001 championships ran from July 16 through July 29, with swimming held in a temporary pool at Marine Messe. The win marked Phelps’s arrival as a world champion before his later Olympic dominance.