Sjostrom breaks 100m butterfly record

Sweden’s Sarah Sjostrom broke the women’s 100m butterfly record on Sunday as Sun Yang and Katie Ledecky retained their 400m freestyle titles at the world championships.
China’s Sun, the reigning 400, 800 and 1500m world champion and record holder over the mile, clocked three minutes 42.58 seconds to win his final by more than a second as Britain’s James Guy took silver.
The Chinese giant is still nearly three seconds from Paul Biedermann’s world record, set by the German in 2009 before neoprene suits were banned, and it remains his goal a year from the Rio de Janeiro Olympics.
American teenager Ledecky, a triple world-record holder, built a commanding lead in her final and came within a second of her own world record in the event, but had to make do with a winning time of 3:59.13 mins – a new championship record.
There was a surprise early in the evening as Sjostrom broke the world record in her semi-final on only the second swim of the night to set herself up for Monday’s 100m butterfly final.
A gold medal dream came true for sisters Cate and Bronte Campbell as they helped Australia win the women’s 4x100m freestyle title.
The Queensland siblings paired up as Cate, the world 100m freestyle champion, anchored the team to set a new championship record of three minutes 31.48 seconds.
The Netherlands won silver at 2.19 secs back while the United States, including six-time world gold medallist Missy Franklin, won bronze at 3.13 back.
Having stood on the podium together when Australia won silver in Barcelona two years ago, the sisters went one better with gold in Kazan.
After the US team failed to qualify from the morning’s heats for the men’s 4x100m freestyle relay for the first time in world championships history, the French quartet retained their title.
Mehdy Metella, Florent Manaudou, Fabien Gilot and Jeremy Stravius clocked three minutes, 10.74 seconds as Russia finished just 0.45secs behind to claim silver with loud encouragement from the home crowd in Kazan.