The Hindu : Sport / Swimming : Hackett sets world record

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jul 29, 2005

Sport

Sport - Swimming

Hackett sets world record

MONTREAL: Grant Hackett of Australia set a world record in winning the 800 metres freestyle at the swimming World championships on Wednesday, his second gold medal and third overall in the meet.

Hackett's time of 7 minutes, 38.65 seconds lowered the mark of 7:39.16 set by countryman Ian Thorpe at the 2001 World championships in Fukuoka, Japan.

When Hackett touched the wall, his head popped out the water and he turned to look at the scoreboard. ``Yeah!'' he screamed on seeing the time.

Hackett turned toward the stands and held aloft his right index finger, a proper indicator of his status as the world's best long-distance freestyle swimmer and the most prolific medal winner in meet history.

Thorpe is skipping this year's World championships.

Speaking from Sydney on Thursday, Thorpe said the 800m freestyle world record rightfully belonged to Hackett and he had no intention of taking it off him. ``He (Thorpe) is very happy for Grant that he broke the record, he thinks it's great he did it,'' said Thorpe's manager Dave Flaskas said.

The results (finals):

Men: 50m breaststroke: 1. Mark Warnecke (Ger, 27.63s); 2. Mark Gangloff (U.S., 27.71); 3. Kosuke Kitajima (Jpn, 27.78).

200m butterfly: 1. Pawel Korzeniowski (Pol, 1:55.02); 2. Takeshi Matsuda (Jpn, 1:55.62); 3. Peng Wu (Chn, 1:56.50).

800m freestyle: 1. Grant Hackett (Aus, 7:38.65 — new world record); 2. Larsen Jensen (U.S., 7:45.63); 3. Yuri Prilujov (Rus, 7:46.64). — Agencies

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