Olympic swimming champion Tom Dean claims Britain’s first medal at 2022 World Championships

Tom Dean could not quite repeat his achievement from Tokyo 2020 but the Olympic champion has got Great Britain on the medal board at the World Swimming Championships in Budapest.

The gold medallist in the 200m freestyle had to settle for bronze in the same event, with Romania’s David Popovici taking victory ahead of South Korea’s Hwang Sun-woo.

Dean was in contention to win the race having led at the halfway stage, but Popovici touched home first, with the British swimmer recording a season’s best time of 1:44.98.

The performance of the night came from Italy’s Thomas Ceccon, who set a sensational new world record in the 100m backstroke, coming home 0.25 seconds quicker than the previous best mark, set six years ago by the USA’s Ryan Murphy. The new best mark now stands at 51.60s.

“I have no words, there was an Olympic champion in 2016 (Murphy) and other strong people (in the field). I’m pretty happy,” said Ceccon after the event.

Katie Ledecky racked up her 17th world title by winning the 1500m freestyle, adding to the 400m victory she had on the opening day of the event.

Elsewhere, Freya Anderson qualified fastest for the final of the 200m freestyle, while James Guy (200m butterfly) and Molly Renshaw (100m backstroke) also reached finals.

“My plan was to take it out hard and I paid for that gamble at the end a little bit,” said Dean, reflecting on what he described as a “learning experience”.

“It was probably the hardest 200m I’ve done in my life. I suffered in that back end – but you roll the dice, you learn from every swim you do and it’s an incredible swim from those boys too.”