ADELAIDE: Olympic 200m breaststroke champion Zac Stubblety-Cook smashed the world record on Thursday at the Australian championships with a blistering time of 2mins 05.95secs.

The 23-year-old was under world record pace for the entire race to shatter the 2:06.12 mark set by Russia’s Anton Chupkov at the 2019 world championships.

“I was just trying to swim fast — I didn’t think that fast. I can’t really believe it to be honest, but I’m very happy with that,” he said poolside.

“Last year I put everything in and got that result (Olympic gold), but this year there’s a lot less pressure and obviously that pressure is nice not to have and I’m just stoked.”

Stubblety-Cook swam a lightning race to stun the field and win gold in Tokyo last year in a new Olympic-record time of 2min 06.38sec ahead of Dutch ace Arno Kamminga.

He will now head to the world championships in Budapest next month and the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham in July as the red-hot favourite.

“The end goal is Paris (2024 Olympics) and whatever happens in between I’m just going to enjoy my swimming,” said the Australian.

Asked if it was the perfect race, he replied: “I think there’s always room to improve.”

Stubblety-Cook becomes the only Australian man to hold a current long-course world record. Kaylee McKeown owns the women’s 100m backstroke world record.

Published in Dawn, May 20th, 2022