Australian swim great Kaylee McKeown has set a short-course world record, a day after a compatriot claimed another global benchmark at a World Cup meet in the United States.
McKeown broke the women's short-course 200m backstroke record with a stunning swim on Sunday night at the cup meet in Westmont, Illinois.
McKeown triumphed in one minute 57.87 seconds, bettering the previous world record in the event of 1:58.04 set by her fierce rival Regan Smith in December last year.
McKeown edged Smith by just 0.04 seconds in Sunday night's final.
"I've had pretty poor swims so far, so I just wanted to see what I could do tonight," said McKeown, who has won the 100m and 200m backstroke gold medals at the past two Olympics.
"Having Regan there pushed me the whole way through. It's something I'm used to, always racing one another, so it's a fun time.
"I just wanted to go out hard and hold on. It's not something that I'm used to doing but obviously in short-course I can afford to do that."
Just 24 hours earlier, McKeown's close friend and Dolphins teammate Mollie O'Callaghan broke the 200m freestyle short-course record when clocking 1:49.77, inside the previous mark of 1:50.31 set by Hong Kong's Siobhan Haughey in 2021.
It took another world record on Sunday night to beat O'Callaghan in the 100m freestyle final, when the Queenslander couldn't catch Kate Douglass.
The American star won in 50.19 seconds, some 0.06 seconds faster than the previous mark of Australia's Cate Campbell set in 2017.
O'Callaghan finished second in 51.44.
Douglass became just the third swimmer to hold three individual short-course world records in different strokes.
The 23-year-old now holds short-course benchmarks in the 100m free, the 200m breaststroke and 200m individual medley.
Her compatriot Gretchen Walsh (50m free, 50m/100m butterfly, 100m individual medley) and Canada's Summer McIntosh (400m free, 200m 'fly, 200m medley) are the others to achieve the feat.
Meanwhile, Australia's Lani Pallister took out the women's 1500m freestyle in 15:13.83 - the second-fastest time in the event behind American legend Katie Ledecky's three-year-old world record of 15:08.24.
