Kaylee McKeown defies shoulder scare to win 100m backstroke world title | Swimming

Australia’s backstroke star Kaylee McKeown has overcome an damage scare to seize one other world title.

Just weeks after dislocating a shoulder, McKeown notched a private greatest to win the ladies’s 100m backstroke at swimming’s world championships in Singapore on Tuesday evening.

After compatriot Lani Pallister claimed the ladies’s 1500m freestyle bronze medal, McKeown triumphed in a time simply 0.03 seconds exterior of the world file.

The Queenslander produced a trademark flying end to edge her nice rival and world file holder, American Regan Smith.

McKeown touched in an Australian file 57.16 seconds, forward of Smith (57.35) who holds the world file of 57.13.

The 24-year-old revealed she was injured between Australia’s choice trials final month and this meet.

“I have got a really flexible stroke and it’s my benefit when I swim my backstrokes,” she mentioned. “But sometimes it can cause me to dislocate my shoulder.

“It’s been quite irritated but I have got a good medical team and physiotherapists to help me get through. I’m really really proud. It’s a little bit emotional.”

McKeown has ticked the primary field in what she hopes is a golden double in Singapore – backstroke wins over 100 and 200 metres.

In the ladies’s 1500m freestyle, Pallister took bronze – simply as she did within the occasion on the worlds three years in the past.

Fellow Australian Moesha Johnson, every week after profitable two gold medals for Australia on the open water world championships, completed seventh.

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Pallister (quarter-hour 41.18 seconds) and Johnson (16:02.45) joined a decades-long record of swimmers left within the wake of American megastar Katie Ledecky.

The peerless Ledecky (15:26.44) has now received 22 world titles and her gold on Tuesday took her total medal tally to twenty-eight, second solely to compatriot Michael Phelps’s 33.

“They’re all stressful in some ways, relaxing in some ways,” Ledecky mentioned. “I just try to enjoy each one.

“I certainly feel very confident in my 1500, my ability to hold a pace, so I just wanted to lock into a fast pace from the start and hold on to it.”

In the ladies’s 200m freestyle semi-finals, Australia’s Mollie O’Callaghan and Jamie Perkins superior to Wednesday evening’s medal race as second- and fifth-fastest qualifiers respectively.