27 July,2009 03:37 PM IST | | AFP
Michael Phelps, riding the momentum of a relay victory, opened his individual World Championships campaign today with the second-fastest time in the 200m freestyle heats.
"I felt good coming off the relay," said Phelps, who helped the United States to an upset win in the 4x100m free yesterday night. "It felt fairly controlled for a morning swim.
"I noticed yesterday guys are swimming fast in the morning, you have to kind of step it up in the morning," added Phelps, who said he was satisfied to book his berth in the first of today's semi-finals with a time of 1min 45.60sec.
Phelps is the world record-holder in the 200m free, establishing the mark of 1:42.96 at the Beijing Olympics as part of his eight-gold haul.
So Germany's Paul Biedermann, who stunningly broke Australian legend Ian Thorpe's world record in winning the 400m free yesterday, said he didn't expect the 200m free to come down to a duel between himself and Phelps.
"I don't think so," Biedermann said, even after he led the way into the semi-finals with a time of 1:45.30.
"I don't think it will be a duel at all," Biedermann said. "He looked totally relaxed this morning. If you look at his time, he's in really great shape I think."
Half a dozen world records fell on the first day of racing yesterday as the impact of the latest generation of high-tech swimsuits was felt.
The polyurethane-based supersuits, criticized by some as artificial performance-enhancers, are due to be outlawed from 2010.
But in the meantime the 2009 worlds promise to see a significant re-write of the record books.
Phelps's control notwithstanding, today's heats saw another burst of fast times.
Britain's Emma Spofforth clocked 58.78 in the women's 100m backstroke heats, a championship record and just one-hundredth of a second outside the world record set by Zimbabwe's Kirsty Coventry in the semi-finals in Beijing.
Coventry, who settled for silver in Beijing, notched the third-fastest time of the morning, behind Anastasia Zueva of Russia.
American Rebecca Soni led the way into the women's 100m breaststroke heats with a championship record of 1:05.66.
