Australian Grant Hackett ran away with an unprecedented fourth straight title in his trademark 1,500m freestyle event at the world swimming championships on Sunday.
Hackett kept alive a winning streak that began at the 1998 championships in Australia. After repeating in 2001 and 2003, he came to Montreal trying to become the first swimmer to win the same event at four straight worlds.
No one was close to him, even though Hackett appeared to tire a bit at the end of a grueling meet.
"It's obviously an awesome feeling to achieve something like that and to be the first person in history to do it," Hackett said. "It's over. I've completed it, and it's very satisfying for me."
Hackett won swimming's version of the mile with a time of 14 minutes, 42.58 seconds. That was eight seconds off his world record but comfortably ahead of American Larsen Jensen.
Hackett captured his third individual gold medal -- one more than Michael Phelps -- to go along with a silver. He also won a bronze in the relays.
Jensen out-raced David Davies for the silver in 14:47.58, beating the British swimmer by a mere 53-hundredths of a second.
The US quartet -- Aaron Peirsol, Brendan Hansen, Crocker and Jason Lezak -- won the final event of the championships, the 400m medley relay, in 3:31.85. Russia was second and Japan third.
Sixteen-year-old Katie Hoff, one of the new stars of the American team, completed a sweep of the individual medley, adding the 400m title to her earlier 200m championship. She took the gold in 4:36.07, breaking a 23-year-old meet record. East Germany's Petra Schneider set the previous mark of 4:36.10.
Kirsty Coventry of Zimbabwe claimed silver, and another US swimmer, Kaitlin Sandeno took the bronze.
Laszlo Cseh of Hungary won the men's 400m IM, filling the void when Phelps decided to drop his world-record event at these championships to try out some new races. The winner touched in 4:09.63, with Italy's Luca Marin getting silver and Tunisia's Oussama Mellouli the bronze.
With his eyes on Phelps, Cseh said, "I am first, but I wanted to swim under 4.09."
Libby Lenton won the women's 50m free -- a chaotic sprint from one end of the pool to the other. A time of 24.59 gave the Aussie her third gold medal at this meet, the other two coming in relays.
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