Tokyo Olympics | Australian McKeon anointed sprint queen

An electric Emma McKeon blazed to the women’s Olympic 100m freestyle gold on Friday as flying South African Tatjana Schoenmaker smashed the long-standing women’s 200m breaststroke world record. Australia’s McKeon claimed her fourth Tokyo medal when she hit the wall in a new Olympic record of 51.96 seconds, the second fastest ever.

Hong Kong’s Siobhan Haughey (52.27s) earned another silver after the 200m freestyle, when she came second behind Australia’s Ariarne Titmus.

Australian veteran Cate Campbell was third in 52.52s, bettering her disappointing sixth at the Rio Olympics when she was hot favourite.

McKeown had already clinched gold and bronze in the 4×100 and 4×200 relays and came third in the 100m butterfly, with her four medals so far equalling her Rio tally.

While she was crowned the Tokyo sprint queen, Schoenmaker carved out her own slice of history with a sensational swim in the 200m breast final.

The 24-year-old touched in 2:18.95s to better the 2:19.11s world record set by Denmark’s Rikke Moller Pedersen in 2013.

It was the third new world record in the Tokyo pool, but the first individual record after Australia’s women in the 4x100m relay and China in the women’s 4x200m relay.

Lilly King was second to the South African, with her USA teammate and training partner Annie Lazor third.

China’s Wang Shun upset the field to win the 200m medley in 1:55.00s ahead of Britain’s Duncan Scott and Switzerland’s Jeremy Desplanches.

Double for Rylov

Meanwhile, Russian two-time world champion Evgeny Rylov scored the Olympic backstroke double by taking the 200m gold medal to go with his 100m title.

He touched in a new Olympic record time of 1:53.27s ahead of defending champion Ryan Murphy of the United States and Britain’s Luke Greenbank to shatter America’s long dominance of the event.