Swimming: Perkins and Riley shatter world records: Australians sets new standards as Gillingham fails and Hardcastle talks of retirement at World Championships

KIEREN PERKINS and Samantha Riley claimed world records for Australia at the World Championships in Rome yesterday.

Perkins, the Olympic 1500 metres freestyle champion, broke the world 400m freestyle record to win his first gold medal. Having broken both the 800m and 1500m world records in a single race at the Commonwealth Games last month, he came home alone in 3min 43.80sec to chop 1.20sec from the previous mark, set by Evgeny Sadovyi, of Russia.

Antii Kasvio, the Finnish European champion who won the 200m freestyle on Monday and who had qualified fastest for yesterday's final, came out of his dive nearly half a body clear of Perkins in the lane alongside him. But by the first turn Perkins had overhauled him. Kasvio finished second in 3:48.55.

Riley, winner of Tuesday's 200m breaststroke, completed her golden double with a runaway victory in the 100, which relegated the Chinese to the silver and bronze medals. The 21-year-old 1992 Olympic bronze medallist reached the turn inside world record schedule and stretched away from her rivals on the second length.

She touched in 1:07.69, bettering the 1:07.91 world mark posted by East German Silke Hoerner at the European championships in Strasbourg in August 1987.

Dai Guohong, 16-year-old winner of Monday's 400 metres individual medley, could never get close and she had to settle for silver in 1:09.26, with her team-mate, Yuan Yuan, third in 1:10.19.

Liu Limin and Qu Yun enjoyed a one-two in the women's 100m butterfly final to raise China's gold total to seven out of a possible nine for their women swimmers.

Britain's Nick Gillingham missed out on a 200m breaststroke medal, finishing fourth in the final with a time of 2:14.25. Gold went to Hungary's Norbert Rozsa, in 2:12.81.

Sarah Hardcastle is considering her future in the sport after scratching from the 800m freestyle heats yesterday. The 25-year-old, who came back from a seven-year retirement only last year, said there was a '40 per cent chance' that she will retire for good.

Hardcastle, a 400m bronze medallist at the Commonwealth Games, finished a distant last in the consolation final over the same distance in Rome two days ago.

'It would have been nothing other than foolish to do the 800m when I felt exhausted doing half of it,' Hardcastle said. 'I have got to weigh up my finances because if I cannot support myself I cannot swim, and that's a major issue.'

A leading German drug expert yesterday accused many of China's women swimmers of relying on illegal performance-boosting drugs. 'In China, experiments are being carried out on human beings on a grand scale,' said Professor Werner Franke, a molecular biologist who has made studies of doping in communist East Germany.