American Kate Douglass reclaims 50m freestyle world file at Pan Pacs | Swimming

Kate Douglass shattered the ladies’s 50m freestyle world file on Saturday, clocking 23.49sec within the heats on the Pan Pacific Championships to set a tantalizing showdown with former record-holder Gretchen Walsh.

Douglass improved on the world mark of 23.55sec that fellow-American Walsh set on 28 June on the Sette Colli Trophy in Rome.

Walsh’s mark had improved on the world file of 23.59 that Douglass herself had set on 19 June – and Douglass mentioned that she believed she may nonetheless enhance technically.

“I definitely wasn’t expecting that,” Douglass instructed Swimming World journal. “I still think there are things I could clean up.”

Douglass’s spectacular efficiency got here little greater than 12 hours after she delivered the second-fastest 100m freestyle in historical past swimming the lead-off leg on the United States’s victorious 4x100m free relay.

She touched the wall in 51.69sec – one one-hundredth outdoors the 100m free world file set by Marrit Steenbergen of the Netherlands in June.

“I think barely missing a world record last night kind of fueled me a little bit, and I know I wanted to go in and break the world record today – and I did it this morning,” Douglass mentioned. “I am more rested than when I broke the world record the first time, and I have been amped up.”

Saturday’s 50m free last guarantees fireworks.

Walsh, swimming within the final warmth after Douglass broke her file, touched in 23.78, the second-quickest of the morning.

Australian Meg Harris, who ran down Walsh to win the 100m free on Thursday, was third-fastest in 24.22.

Douglass can be slated for an additional particular person swim on the ultimate night time of the four-day assembly, which brings collectively prime swimmers from non-European nations.

The American, who’s the second-fastest performer in historical past within the 200m breaststroke, certified second-fastest for that last behind Japan’s Kotomi Kato.