Swimming: Rolph racks up victory

The Newcastle teenager, Susan Rolph won the 100 metres medley at the World Cup meet in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, yesterday to add to the success she enjoyed in the event last year.

The 18-year-old, who faced only German swimmers in the final, soon stamped her authority on the race. Her time of 1min 01.74sec gave her a winning margin of 2.33sec, 0.34sec outside her own British record.

After last year's European Short Course Championships, where she recorded the second fastest time ever for the 100m medley event, she had hoped that 1997 would bring her the world mark but she said yesterday: "It's not quite there yet."

Mark Foster gained his fourth consecutive victory in the 50m freestyle. The 26-year-old stormed home in 22.1sec to finish 0.11 ahead of Sergei Aschikhmin of Kazhistan.

James Hickman, though, did not celebrate his 21st birthday in the style he would have wished, losing in the 100m butterfly to Russia's Konstantin Ushkov.