Twenty-one-year-old Marchand gained a decisive lead over his opponent and Phelps’ performance in the breaststroke section. In the end, he finished in 4:02.50 minutes, i.e. 1.34 seconds faster than the legendary American’s long unsurpassed performance. He watched the race live in Japan and applauded Marchand, even though he had just lost his last individual world record.
Similarly sovereign as Marchand, Titmusová performed on the crawler four hundred. After last year’s absence from the world championship, she showed who is the queen of this distance and won by more than three seconds. With a performance of 3:55.38, she improved by seven tenths the performance of 16-year-old Canadian Summer McIntosh, who set her record high in March.
Defending champion Katie Ledecká finished far behind Titmusová. The American star was moving outside the podium in the middle of the race and her acceleration was not enough for a better than silver position. She repeated the position from the Olympic Games in Tokyo, where she fought with Titmusová for the last time.
The young McIntosh lost the world record and did not even win a medal. She was second for most of the race and still held the bronze position fifty meters before the finish line, but then Erika Fairweatherová from New Zealand got in front of her by 35 hundredths.
Australian Samuel Short won the men’s 400m freestyle. The 19-year-old swimmer threatened the year-old world record of the German Paul Biederman and in the end had a tough fight with the Olympic champion Ahmed Hafnav from Tunisia. He clocked 3:40.68, 61 hundredths off the all-time record set in 2009, and won by two hundredths of a second. After last year’s gold in the 1500m and silver in the 400m from the Commonwealth Games, he celebrated his first world title.
A great Australian day was highlighted by the women’s 4x100m freestyle relay of Mollie O’Callaghan, Shayna Jack, Meg Harris and Emma McKeon with a world record 3:27.96. Their male counterparts also won, with Kyle Chalmers securing the title in the same discipline with a fast finish.
2023-07-23 12:17:05
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