DOHA: World records continued to tumble at the short-course world championships on Friday, with Hungarian swimmer Katinka Hosszu breaking two and France’s Florent Manaudou also setting one.

So far 12 records have been broken in three days at the Hamad Aquatic Center, with five of them coming on Friday.

Not only were there five world records on Friday, Femke Heemskerk claimed two gold medals while there was a gold and silver for Sarah Sjostrom and Peter Bernek of Hungary broke the 400m freestyle championship record set in April 1999 by Australian great Grant Hackett.

Also notable was the end of Ryan Lochte’s reign at the helm of the 200m individual medley, Japanese Kosuke Hagino wresting away the crown he had worn for the last four championships.

Hosszu has already lived up to her ‘Iron Lady’ nickname after battling back from opening night disappointment when she was upstaged by Spaniard Mireia Belmonte to clinch victory and a world record in last night’s 100m backstroke.

She returned on Friday to become the first woman to dip under two minutes in the 200m backstroke, taking down Missy Franklin’s mark by 0.80sec in 1:59.23 ahead of Emily Seebohm of Australia and Japan’s Sayara Akase.

She followed this up with another gold in world record time in the 100m individual medley, Hosszu’s time of 56.70 bringing victory over Siobhan-Marie O’Connor of Great Britain with Seebohm getting her second medal of the night.

Manaudou set a new mark of 20.26 seconds in the men’s 50 freestyle final, beating Roland Schoeman of South Africa’s time by 0.04 seconds. “My goal was to win but I didn’t expect to break the record tonight,” Manaudou said.

Earlier, Denmark improved their own world record to win the women’s 4x50 medley relay. The Danish quartet of Mie Nielsen, Rikke Moller Pedersen, Jeantte Ottesen and Pernille Blume finished in 1:44.04, bettering their mark of 1:45.92 set in 2013.

The Netherlands then ended the day by setting a world record in the women’s 4x100 freestyle. Inge Dekker, Femke Heemskerk, Maud Van Der Meer and Ranomi Kromowidjojo combined to clock 3:26.53, shaving 1.89 seconds off the team’s own mark set in Amsterdam in 2009.

It was the second gold of the night for Heemskerk with the 27-year-old having claimed the individual 100m freestyle title in a meet record 51.37.

Belmonte picked up her fourth gold medal by winning the women’s 400 freestyle. She touched in 3:55.76, ahead of Sharon van Rouwendaal and Zhang Yufei of China.

Hungary had two more gold medallists, with Daniel Gyurta winning the 200 breaststroke in 2:01.49 and Bernek taking the 400 freestyle in 3:34.32, breaking Hackett’s championship mark by 0.69sec.

Published in Dawn December 7th , 2014