KAZAN: Florent Manaudou won the 50m freestyle at the world swimming championships to go with his Olympic title on Saturday night.

The Frenchman claimed swimming’s glamour event in 21.19 seconds, fastest in the world this year.

Nathan Adrian of the United States finished second in 21.52. Bruno Fratus of Brazil took third in 21.55.

Defending champion Missy Franklin faltered in the 200m backstroke, getting overtaken down the stretch by Emily Seebohm of Australia, who touched in 2 minutes, 5.81 seconds.

Franklin, the Olympic champion, settled for silver in 2:06.34. In six events so far, Franklin has four medals, but no individual gold two years after she won a record six golds at the worlds in Barcelona.

Katinka Hosszu of Hungary finished third in 2:06.84.

Seebohm took the race out hard, dipping under Franklin’s world-record pace on the first lap. Franklin took over for the next two laps and owned a slight advantage heading to the finish before Seebohm rallied from third to win.

South African Chad le Clos won the men’s 100m butterfly final, clocking 50.56 seconds for a new African record as Hungary’s Laszlo Cseh took silver at 0.31 back while Singapore’s Joseph Schooling swam an Asian record of 50.96.

Sweden’s Sarah Sjostrom won the women’s 50m butterfly final to complete the double having already won the 100m title.

Sjostrom clocked 24.96 seconds in the 200m final, to set a new championship record, with Denmark’s Jeanette Ottesen taking silver at 0.38sec back. China’s Lu Ying swam a new Asian record of 25.37secs to claim bronze at 0.41.

Published in Dawn, August 9th, 2015

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