Molly Renshaw lowers British record again at World Short Course Championships

Molly Renshaw has lowered the Women’s 100m Breaststroke British record twice in as many days at the World Short Course Championships.

On the penultimate finals session of the championships, the 25-year-old swam in lane seven after qualifying sixth fastest.

Renshaw’s qualifying time of 1:04.43 was 0.29 seconds quicker than her previous best (1:04.72) and saw her set a new British record in the semi-final.

She followed it up with an impressive swim in the final, as she powered down the home straight to touch the wall in a time of 1:04.37.

The Loughborough National Centre swimmer lowered the British record by a further 0.06 seconds to finish in fifth place.

The result sets Renshaw up nicely as she heads into her favoured event on the final day of action, the 200m Breaststroke.

Improvement on last night

After her swim, she said: “That’s a little bit of an improvement on last night, so I’m really happy with that. The 100m has never really been my main strength, so to see quite a drop there, I’m quite happy.

“I have the 200m tomorrow, so I’m looking forward to that now. I’m excited about that one. Having that front-end speed is always going to help.

“My back 50m is always stronger than my 100, so hopefully I can use that in the 200m on Tuesday.”

Taking the gold in the 100m race was China’s Qianting Tang (1:03.47), followed by Sweden’s Sophie Hansson (1:03.50) in second and Mona McSharry (1:03.92) of Ireland in third.

Renshaw also competed in the 50m Breaststroke event earlier in the competition but was beaten in a swim-off by Florine Gaspard of Belgium and missed out on a semi-final spot.

Earlier this month, the Olympian swam a time of 1:05.07 in the 100m Breaststroke at the Swim England National Winter Championships, which she described as a chance to ‘blow the cobwebs away’.