adminchampionships by storm and eclipse faltering teammate Michael Phelps.
The Olympic champion, a day after setting the first world record since high-tech swimsuits were banned last year, led from start to finish in the 200m backstroke to reclaim the title he won in 2007.
Lochte timed 1min 52.96sec ahead of Japan’s Ryosuke Irie and Tyler Clary of the United States. He had earlier beaten Phelps to win both the 200m freestyle and the 200m individual medley, which he won in record time.
Minutes earlier, the championships witnessed only their third ever dead-heat final – and the second this week – as Aliaksandra Herasimenia of Belarus and Denmark’s Jeanette Ottesen both finished the women’s 100m freestyle in 53.45.
The rare event happened after Camille Lacourt and Jeremy Stravius became France’s first male world champions with identical times in the 100m backstroke on Tuesday. Before Shanghai, only one world final had been decided by a dead heat, when Italy’s Filippo Magnini and Canadian Brent Hayden shared the 100m freestyle title in 2007. “I’m happy. Yes, I’m surprised,” said Herasimenia. “I believed I could do it but I couldn’t be sure.”
Dutch swimmer Ranomi Kromowidjojo was awarded bronze and uncannily, there was another dead heat for fourth place between Britain’s Francesca Halsall and Femke Heemskerk of the Netherlands, who both clocked 53.72.
Meanwhile, Olympic champion Rebecca Soni made it a golden night for medals leaders the United States when she won the 200m breaststroke, adding to her 100m breaststroke title won earlier in Shanghai.
Soni took it in 2:21.47 ahead of Yuliya Efimova of Russia and Canada’s Martha McCabe. But the evening again belonged to Lochte, a day after his 200m individual medley of 1:54.00 set the first world record in 19 months and beat Olympic champion Phelps in the process. At the last world championships in 2009, polyurethane-clad swimmers set a whopping 43 world records in farcical scenes at Rome’s Foro Italico. The suits helped break more than 200 global bests before they were outlawed. – AFP.
Online Reporter