Chinese teenager Sun Yang toppled swimming’s oldest world record yesterday when he shattered Grant Hackett’s 10-year mark in the men’s 1,500m, ensuring a rousing finish to the Shanghai FINA World Championships.
Sun, roared on by a capacity crowd, put on a devastating burst during the final 100m as he made up a deficit of more than two seconds to touch in 14 minutes, 34.14 seconds — 0.42 secong inside Hackett’s mark set at the 2001 meeting in Fukuoka.
American Ryan Lochte claimed a superb fifth gold medal, while stuttering Olympic great Michael Phelps enjoyed a successful final night when he helped the US defend their 4x100m medley title.
Photo: Reuters
Sun’s performance was only the second new record in Shanghai, two years after polyurethane-clad swimmers set 43 new bests at the 2009 championships in Rome.
It broke the only men’s mark to survive the infamous “super-suits” era, when muscle-compressing swimwear helped set more than 200 global bests in just two years.
“I was not obsessed with the world record before the final because I wanted to focus on my plan — my goal was to win the gold,” Sun said. “I’m so grateful to the whole Chinese team, including my coach and my parents as well, and I think the world record belongs to all of them.”
Photo: Reuters
Meanwhile, US star Lochte, this week’s other record-setter, underlined his supremacy in Shanghai with his fifth gold medal, matching Phelps’ haul from 2009.
Lochte led from start to finish at the Sea Crown stadium to defend his 2009 title in 4 minutes, 7.13 seconds, more than four seconds ahead of teammate Tyler Clary with Japan’s Yuya Horihata third.
However, Lochte insisted he was “not really happy,” saying he could still make big improvements before next year’s London Olympics.
“For the most part I’m not really happy. I mean getting five gold medals is definitely great, but the times I went I know I can go a lot faster,” he said. “There’s a lot of places in my races that I messed up on, where I could have changed and would have gone faster, but I guess I have a whole another year to make sure I have those perfect swims.”
Also on the final night, US world record-holder Jessica Hardy made a successful return to the world stage from a doping ban when she won the 50m breaststroke ahead of defending champion Yuliya Efimova of Russia.
Hardy, who missed the 2008 Olympics after a positive test and was serving a one-year ban during the 2009 world championships, timed 30.19 seconds — outside her record of 29.80 seconds — with teammate Rebecca Soni third.
“I am really excited, I’ve trained so hard for that,” Hardy said. “I am really, really glad that I did it. I performed very well. All of us did a good job.”
British world record-holder Liam Tancock defended his 50m backstroke title from France’s Camille Lacourt and Gerhard Zandberg of South Africa.
Sweden’s Therese Alshammar won the women’s 50m freestyle, while American Elizabeth Beisel won the 400m individual medley.
Phelps was instrumental in the US’ 4x100m medley win, as he took them from fourth to second in the butterfly leg, before Nathan Adrian finished off the win.
Lochte has long played second fiddle to Phelps, but he has called the tune in Shanghai, beating his contemporary in the 200m freestyle and 200m individual medley, which he won in world record time.
The 26-year-old also won the 200m backstroke and gave the US a record fourth straight 4x200m medley world title with a super-fast final leg, after a slow lead-off from Phelps.
FINA’s doping control review board chairman Andrew Pipe said there were no positive dope tests during the meet, which was hit by controversy when Brazil’s Cesar Cielo escaped a ban for testing positive for a banned diuretic.
Bayer 04 Leverkusen go into today’s match at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim stung from their first league defeat in 16 months. Leverkusen were beaten 3-2 at home by RB Leipzig before the international break, the first loss since May last year for the reigning league and cup champions. While any defeat, particularly against a likely title rival, would have disappointed coach Xabi Alonso, the way in which it happened would be most concerning. Just as they did in the Supercup against VfB Stuttgart and in the league opener to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Leverkusen scored first, but were pegged back. However, while Leverkusen rallied late to
If all goes well when the biggest marathon field ever gathered in Australia races 42km through the streets of Sydney on Sunday, World Marathon Majors (WMM) will soon add a seventh race to the elite series. The Sydney Marathon is to become the first race since Tokyo in 2013 to join long-established majors in New York, London, Boston, Berlin and Chicago if it passes the WMM assessment criteria for the second straight year. “We’re really excited for Sunday to arrive,” race director Wayne Larden told a news conference in Sydney yesterday. “We’re prepared, we’re ready. All of our plans look good on
The lights dimmed and the crowd hushed as Karoline Kristensen entered for her performance. However, this was no ordinary Dutch theater: The temperature was 80°C and the audience naked apart from a towel. Dressed in a swimsuit and to the tune of emotional music, the 21-year-old Kristensen started her routine, performed inside a large sauna, with a bed of hot rocks in the middle. For a week this month, a group of wellness practitioners, called “sauna masters,” are gathering at a picturesque health resort in the Netherlands to compete in this year’s Aufguss world sauna championships. The practice takes its name from a
When details from a scientific experiment that could have helped clear Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva landed at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the leader of the organization’s reaction was unequivocal: “We have to stop that urgently,” he wrote. No mention of the test ever became public and Valieva’s defense at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) went on without it. What effect the information could have had on Valieva’s case is unclear, but without it, the skater, then 15 years old, was eventually disqualified from the 2022 Winter Olympics after testing positive for a banned heart medication that would later