Swimming: Hackett's world record

GRANT HACKETT broke the oldest world record in men's swimming yesterday, the 200 metres freestyle, at the Australian national championships in Brisbane. Swimming the first leg of a 4x200m relay, the teenager shaved two-hundredths of a second off the 1:46.69 mark set by the Italian Giorgio Lamberti at the European Championships in Bonn in August 1989.

Hackett, the world 1,500m champion, appeared astonished when he saw his time of 1:46.67, before throwing his arms out in triumph. "I'm just amazed at what I've done because I'm not a sprinter," said Hackett, who won the individual 200m freestyle on Monday ahead of Ian Thorpe and Michael Klim.

The 18-year-old had never won a major 200m race before he upset Klim, world champion at the distance, and Thorpe, world champion at 400m, in Monday's race. Then he was inside Lamberti's world record schedule at the half-way mark before tiring.

Thorpe swam the second fastest time in history for the 400m on Saturday, beating Hackett in the process. However, he was well beaten in the individual 200m by Hackett, whose winning time on Monday was just 0.3sec outside the Italian's old record.

Hackett's achievement overshadowed another record-breaking swim by Susan O'Neill, who broke the longest-standing record of all last month when she eclipsed Mary T Meagher's 18-year-old mark for 200m butterfly in a short-course pool. Yesterday O'Neill, who also holds the world and Olympic titles in butterfly, broke the Commonwealth 200m freestyle record, winning in 1:59.11 to carve 0.63sec off the mark of 1:59.74 set by the Englishwoman June Crofts in 1982.