CHINA won the women’s 4x100m medley relay world title in a world record time of 3 minutes, 52.19 seconds in Rome, Italy, on Saturday.
China broke the previous record of 3:52.69 set by Australia in winning Olympic gold in Beijing last August.
“It’s so cool. We had a great race. We all improved our times by one second,” said Zhao Jing, whose opening backstroke leg left China in second place by a narrow margin.
Chen Huijia gave her team a narrow lead on the second breaststroke leg and they held off a battling Aussie squad to keep the advantage the rest of the way.
“We all swam so well, we all did a great job today,” said butterflyer Jiao Liuyang. “We weren’t paying attention to the other teams we were too far from them. We concentrated on our own race.”
Li Zhesi finished off the closing freestyle against former world record-holder Libby Trickett as Australia took silver in 3:52.58 — also under their Beijing world record.
“It was a tough competition, even without the U.S. team, but we put together the race and we did our best,” Trickett said.
The United States sensationally failed to qualify for the final, posting the 10th-fastest time in the heats.
It was the first time in the history of the World Championships that the Americans failed to claim either first or second in the event. Bronze went to Germany in 3:55.79.
It was China’s fourth swimming gold of the championships.
On Thursday, Zhao Jing won the 50m backstroke title and the Chinese women’s team (Liu Jing, Yang Yu, Zhu Qianwei and Pang Jiaying) captured the women’s 4x200m freestyle relay in a world record of 7:42.08.
They conquered their nerves to take 23-hundredths of a second off the world mark set by Australia in winning Olympic gold last year in Beijing.
“This was my first world championships and I got a gold medal,” Liu said. “I never dreamt that it was possible. I was so nervous my hand was trembling even in the water.”
The world record for the 50m backstroke fell twice in the semifinals.
Germany’s Daniela Samulski broke it first with a time of 27.39 and Anastasia Zueva of Russia then clocked 27.38 in the second semi.
Samulski improved on that again, capturing silver in 27.23 seconds, with China’s Gao Chang third in 27.28.
Zhao regained a record she had held earlier this year alongside Sophie Edington.
Even more importantly, she helped sink the memory of her 100m backstroke failure at the 2008 Olympics, where she was disqualified in the heats.
“I’ve been wanting to prove myself since then and now I’ve done it,” Zhao said after her 27.06-seconds mark.
On Wednesday, Zhang Lin became the first Chinese man to win a world swimming title with his word record win in the 800m freestyle.
(SD-Agencies)