Jenny Thompson and Lenny Krayzelburg pursue record-breaking trails this week at the World Short-Course Swimming Championships, the last global swimming challenge before the Olympics. The North American-based pair, who have set 10 world records between them in the past 12 months, lead a record entry of more than 540 swimmers from an expected 76 nations at the four-day Championships beginning on Thursday. The Championship has had a late withdrawal with South African double Olympic Champion Penny Heyns pulling out following the death of Canadian breaststroker Tara Sloan, Heyns's family said today. Heyns, who has broken 11 world breaststroke marks in the last year, has remained in Calgary, where she is based, to offer support to Sloan's family. Sloan, Heyns's team-mate at Calgary University, died after being in a coma following a car accident.
Swedish sprinters Therese Alshammar and Anna-Karin Kammerling, who broke world records at last December's European Short-Course Championships in Lisbon, and the likes of Britons Mark Foster and James Hickman should ensure Europeans have a big say too. South African double Olympic Champion Heyns, based with her longstanding coach Jan Bidrman at Canada's Calgary University, has broken 11 breaststroke world marks in the last year, four at the Pan Pacific Championships in Sydney, where Krayzelburg set three backstroke records and Thompson broke the 100 metres butterfly mark. Thompson was outstanding at the last world short-course championships in Hong Kong last April, taking the 100 metres individual medley world mark below one minute and winning the 100 metres freestyle and 50 and 100 metres butterfly titles.
Ukrainian-born Krayzelburg, double World Long-Course Champion, did not race in Hong Kong but has since demonstrated formidable form in the 25-metre short-course pool, breaking the 100 and 200 backstroke world marks in Berlin last month. Fellow American Thompson, who preceded her Hong Kong treble with two golds at the 1997 world short-course championships in Gothenburg, has also shown an undiminished turn of speed, posting 50 and 100 butterfly short-course marks in the recently concluded World Cup series.
