A Special Thanks to Deep Blue Media for providing the images from this meet FLASH! United States Demolishes World Record In Mixed 4×50 Medley Relay; European Mark For Italy The United States obliterated the world record in the mixed 4x50m medley relay in 1:35.15 at the World Short-Course Championships in Melbourne. The quartet of Ryan Murphy, Nic Fink, Kate Douglass and Torri Huske took 1.0 3seconds off the previous WR set by the Netherlands at the European Short-Course Championships in 2021. Murphy later added gold in the 100 backstroke. Murphy: 22.37 Fink: 24.96 Douglass: 24.09 Huske: 23.73 Italy set a European record of 1:36.01 and Canada – with Maggie Mac Neil coming home in 23.15 – were elevated to third in 1:36.93 after Germany and the Netherlands were DQ’d. Great Britain – featuring Adam Peaty in his first global final since Tokyo 2020 – were fourth. Fink said: “My best split ever. “Pretty cool experience to see that world record go down.” “We were all juggling a lot of races tonight but once we knew we were on the relay we were happy to get the night off to a good start. “We discussed breaking the world record earlier today. It was definitely mentioned but with all of the different combinations so no one was really sure who would be on the relay. Once the relay lineup was set, we knew what we had to do.” Nicolo Martinenghi split 24.83 on the breaststroke leg for Italy – the fastest in the field – as they went inside the old WR to set a European mark. He said: “It’s incredible. Last year we finished in third place, so before the race we were saying we need to go better than that. “It’s a European Record, so that’s amazing. I swam my best performance in that relay, a 24.83. “We are in a big team, we are all together, it’s incredible. It’s amazing to stay here, it’s amazing to compete in Melbourne. It’s my first time in Australia and I love it. “It’s strange (the mixed relay), you can see the distance between one team and the other, and then after 50, they are in the same position. It’s a new mindset. But we love it.”
