Van der Burgh breaks 50m breaststroke world record at World C’ships

Cameron van der Burgh heated up a chilly Tuesday morning at the swimming world championships by improving his own world record in the 50-meter breaststroke.

Adam Peaty’s proud mother watched her son make it a hat-trick of gold medals at the World Swimming Championships in Russian Federation – then revealed he was scared of water as a child.

Having beaten Van der Burgh on the wall in the 100m final, Peaty again came out on top of his South African rival over the sprint distance.

As noted in the aforementioned piece, the Brit has also swum a time of 26.62, in Berlin last year, but FINA didn’t approve it because Peaty had not been tested for EPO.

Peaty qualified second in 26.68, winning the last of nine heats.

The 18-year-old, who has already claimed 400m and 1,500m freestyle golds, clocked one minute, 55.16 seconds with Italy’s world record-holder Federica Pellegrini taking silver 0.00.16 behind and Missy Franklin of the US earning bronze at 0.00.33 behind.

“The 100m against Cameron was one of the hardest races of my life but I stepped up and didn’t get taken away by the occasion tonight”.

It was Britain’s fourth gold of the week – their best ever haul at a World Championships.

Britain’s Ross Murdoch took bronze at 0.57s back.

Japan s Natsumi Hoshi was the fastest into the women s 200m butterfly final on Thursday at 2:06.36 secs, but the big surprise was Hungary s Iron Lady, Katinka Hosszu failing to qualify as 13th fastest in the semi-finals as the 200m IM champion missed out.

“I’m really happy with the win, it’s a good start after yesterday and now another gold today, but I didn’t swim as fast as I wanted”, admitted Manaudou.

Peaty’s gold was the latest in a series of successes for the world record holder, European and Commonwealth Games champion, boosting hopes for next summer’s Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.

Mitchell Larkin of Australia topped the semifinals of the 100 backstroke, dipping briefly under world-record pace on the first lap.

And they then added another when the 4x100m medley relay team broke the world record in the final, the third time the record had fallen on the day.

Away from the swimming pool, Britain has also been strong in other events at the world aquatics championships.

In the men’s 100m freestyle, Olympic champion Nathan Adrian of the United States laboured to sixth place in qualification ahead of the semi-finals later on Wednesday.