The China Mail - Dressel grabs 15th world gold as Santos sets age record

At 42, runner-up Nicholas Santos broke his own record as oldest World Championship medallist.

The Brazilian edged Andrew Michael of the United States by one hundredth of a second to claim silver.

"I'm 42 years old, it's not so easy to stay here competing with these guys," Santos said. "It's really painful to stay training hard to get to compete with these guys."

Nicolo Martinenghi made the most of the absence of Adam Peaty to grab the 100m breaststroke world title and then said he missed the dominant Briton - a little.

"It's not the same without Adam I know, but I am happy to sit in the throne that he left, I am happy to be the first guy that used this moment without him," said the 22-year-old Italian.

"I spoke to him before I came here and he said to me he'll come back fast because the throne needs its king," Martinenghi said with a laugh.

Martinenghi, the bronze medallist in last year's Olympics, finished in 58.26sec to edge Dutchman Arno Kamminga, who repeated his Tokyo silver with American Nic Fink third.

"It's 100 percent mentality in this kind of competition, mentality is everything, the most difficult thing is to beat myself, I am racing against the time and myself, not the other guys," said the Italian.

The winning time was 1.38sec outside Peaty's championship record.

Peaty has set the 17 fastest times in the history of the event. He won the last two Olympic and last three world titles.

American Torri Huske continued her blistering form from the heats as she surged to victory in the women's 100m butterfly world title.

Huske set a personal best of 55.64sec to beat French hope Marie Wattel by half a second with Zhang Yufei from China completing the podium.

"I'm really excited," said Huske.

World record holder Lilly King was only ninth fastest in the women's 100m breaststroke semis but collected one of the eight slots in the final, and the chance to defend her title, after American team-mate Annie Lazor was disqualified.

German Anna Elendt was the fastest qualifier.

Apostolos Christou from Greece set a championship record in the semi-finals of the men's 100m backstroke.

Italian Thomas Ceccon, who was second just 0.03sec behind, also broke the record set by Xu Jiayu three years ago. Jiayu missed the final.

Y.Su--ThChM