Five world records fell in the evening session of the penultimate day of the World Short Course Swimming Championships in Budapest, BTA reports. The first top achievement was registered by Gretchen Walsh (pictured) in the 100-meter butterfly final. The American won the gold medal in a time of 52.71 seconds, bettering her own time from Friday's semifinals by more than a tenth.
Tessa Gille of the Netherlands finished second in 54.66 seconds, and Alexandra Perkins of Australia came in third with an Oceania record of 55.10 seconds.
A few minutes later, Walsh set her second world record of the session and ninth overall since the start of the world championships in Hungary. In the 50-meter freestyle semifinals, she broke Ranomi Kromovijojjo's record by six hundredths of a second and qualified for the final with a time of 22.87 seconds.
Another world record fell in the semifinals. It was in the men's 50-meter freestyle, where Jordan Crooks of the Cayman Islands became the first person to go under 20 seconds. Crooks broke his own heat record this morning with a time of 19.90 seconds. That was more than six-tenths faster than the time of the second-place finisher in the semifinals, Jack Alexi of the United States.
The other highlights came in the finals. Switzerland's Noé Ponti won gold in the men's 100-meter butterfly in 47.71 seconds, ahead of France's Maxime Grousset (48.57 seconds) and Australia's Matthew Temple (48.71 seconds). Ponti broke the 2020 record set by American Caleb Dressel by seven-hundredths of a second.
Canada's Summer McIntosh won the 400-meter final in 4:15.48. This is a record for both girls and women, and it improved the achievement of Spain's Maria Belmonte Garcia from 2017 by almost 3.5 seconds.
American Katie Grimes came in second place, almost five seconds behind, and third place went to Abbie Woods from Great Britain.
No records were broken in the last three finals of the evening. The gold medal in the 800-meter freestyle went to the representative of the hosts from Hungary, Zalán Szarkan, with a time of 7:30.56 minutes. Second is German Florian Welbrok, while the bronze goes to Tunisian Ahmed Djawadi.
In the men's 400-meter individual medley, the new world champion in the 25-meter pool is Russian Ilya Borodin with 3:56.83 minutes, followed by American Carson Foster and Italian Alberto Raczetti.
In the most spectacular event - the mixed 4x100-meter individual medley relay, the triumph was for neutral athletes from Russia - Miron Lefintsev, Kirill Prigoda, Anna Surkova and Daria Klepikova, who won gold with 3:30.47 minutes. The US relay team ranked second, and Canada's third.
The World Championships in Budapest end on Sunday.