DOHA: Five more world records were broken at the Short-course World Championships on Sunday, with Sarah Sjostrom of Sweden setting two on the final day.

The total number of world records at the Hamad Aquatic Centre in Doha ended at 23, way ahead of the 17 set at the 2008 worlds in Manchester.

Sjostrom dominated her events in the 25m pool on the final day, setting records in winning the 100m butterfly and 200 freestyle finals.

She claimed the 100m butterfly title in 54.61secs to slice a hefty 0.44secs from the previous mark held by France’s Diane Bui Duyet since December 2009.

The Swede then returned to set a new time of 1min 50.78sec in the freestyle, slicing 0.39sec off the previous record held by the Italian Federica Pellegrini from December 2009 as the performance-enhancing suit era came to a close.

Etiene Medeiros of Brazil became the fastest woman to swim the 50 backstroke, Markus Deibler set a new mark in winning the 10m0 medley and the Netherlands broke the record in the women’s 4x50m freestyle.

On Saturday, Katinka Hosszu set her fourth world record when the Hungarian swimmer smashed her own mark to win the women’s 200m individual medley.

It was a dominant effort from Hosszu who finished in a time of 2:01.86, bettering her record of 2:02.13 set in August in Dubai to take her medal haul to six, including two silvers, on the penultimate day of the championships.

Her fourth record and gold medal of the meet equalled Mireia Belmonte Garcia’s tally, with the Spaniard not in action in any of the finals on Saturday.

Alia Atkinson became the first black woman to win a world swimming title when she triumphed in the 100m breaststroke to equal a world record.

Jamaican Atkinson, 25, claimed the title and equalled Ruta Meilutyte’s world record of 1min 02.36sec in the process — although under governing body FINA rules this still equates to a new record.

Elsewhere, Frenchman Florent Manaudou beat American Peter Marshall’s six-year-old world record in the 50 backstroke, clocking 22.22 seconds to take his Doha haul to three golds and a silver.

World records also tumbled when Russia won the men’s 4x50 freestyle title and the United States were first in the 4x50 mixed freestyle.

Russia improved their own mark by 0.76 seconds when they clocked 1:22.60 and the victory followed on from the gold medal they won at the 2013 European short-course championships.

The US fought off a strong Russian effort to take gold in the mixed freestyle in 1:28.57.

Chad le Clos set a championship record of 21.95 as the South African added the 50m butterfly title to his 100m gold.

Published in Dawn December 8th , 2014