SHANGHAI - American Ryan Lochte set a world record of one minute 49.05 seconds in the men's 200 metres backstroke at the World short-course championships on Sunday.
Lochte broke the previous world record of 1:50.43 set by Austrian Markus Rogan at the European Championships in Trieste last December.

Later, the 22-year-old US champion, broke the 100 metres backstroke world record by clocking 49.99 seconds in swimming the first leg of the 4x100 medley relay.
Lochte's time, which allows him to become the only man to break the 50sec barrier for the distance, beat the 50.32 set by compatriot Peter Marshall on March 26, 2004 in East Meadow, USA.

In the same event Ukraine finished third and set a new European record of 3 minutes, 28:62 seconds. The quartet of Andriy Oleynyk, Oleg Lisogor, Sergiy Advena, Andriy Serdinov broke the mark of 3:30.21 set by a Russian team (Evgueni Alechine, Dmitry Komornikov, Igor Martchenko, Denis Pimankov) on April 7, 2002, at Moscow.

Earlier, Germany's Janine Pietsch set a european record in the 50 metres backstroke when she covered the distance in 27.00 seconds. She broke a 5-year-old old mark of 27.06 that Czech Republic backstroker Ilona Hlavackova set at the European championships in the Belgian city of Antwerp on December 14, 2001.

Finally, Yuri Prilukov of Russia set a European record in the 1500 metres freestyle. Prilukov, also 400 free European record holder, broke his own mark that he set in Trieste, by 3.20 seconds in swimming 14 minutes, 23.92 seconds.