Swimming: Baker breaks through to reclaim sprint world mark

Zoe Baker reclaimed her world record yesterday in the 50m breaststroke at the World Cup meet here. Since December the world record has been passed around between the world's four leading female breaststroke sprinters. Indeed this is the third time the Briton herself has broken it this month.

"It was so nice to get it back," she said. "I looked up and saw I'd got it and a wave of relief just swept over me. I am so happy."

As yesterday was the last round of the World Cup series, Baker stands a decent chance of keeping it until she competes in the World Championships in three months' time in Moscow.

Baker gained strength from talking to the American breaststroker Ed Moses, who lost his 50m world record on Saturday but went on the break the 200m breaststroke world record later on. "I watched Moses lose the 50m record then get back in and break the 200m record and got so much inspiration from that," she said. "He told me it was hard for him to get back in and go faster. So I thought I had nothing to lose. If Ed can do it, I can do it. He was very helpful."

Mark Foster made it two golds for Britain when he won the final of the 50m freestyle in 21.51sec. His world record of 21.13 set one year ago remains intact and he is already looking ahead to Moscow. Yesterday's gold was his first in the European rounds of the series.

"I'm very, very pleased. 21.51 for now is just superb," he said. "It was good race experience. I've come second in the other European rounds until today. I'm pleased to be doing these times without resting. I'm in a power and endurance phase of my training just now and am about to start fast training with more rest periods. That is more race specific to build up to Moscow."

Fresh from his gold on Saturday in the 200m butterfly, James Hickman took on Germany's Thomas Rupprath and Geoff Huegill, of Australia, in the 100m butterfly but was no match for Rupprath. Although the German only crept into yesterday's final in the outside lane, he still broke his own world record set last month in Antwerp, in a time of 50.10 leaving Huegill to pick up silver in 50.84 and Hickman denied bronze with his time of 51.92 by Michael Mintenko, of Canada.