Phelps wins 6th gold at swimming worlds

(AP)
Updated: 2007-03-31 19:31

"Anything I do, as long as I'm trying to promote diversity in swimming, I think is going to help no matter what," Jones said. "I just hope this is not a trend. At world short course, I got silver. Here I got silver. Hopefully, at the Olympics I get gold."

Wildman-Tobriner goes by a combination of his mother's maiden name and his father's name. The 22-year-old Stanford swimmer's first international gold medal came at the 2005 worlds, when he swam on the 400 freestyle relay in the morning. He also swam preliminaries of the 400 free here, earning a gold.

Margaret Hoelzer of the United States ended her runner-up streak in the women's 200 backstroke, winning with the second-fastest time ever - 2 minutes, 7.16 seconds.

The former Auburn swimmer who turned 24 Friday had finished second at the 2003 and '05 worlds, where she was beaten by Kirsty Coventry of Zimbabwe.

"It is exciting to finally kind of get past that second place, finally move up and see what it feels like," she said. "To see everybody else swim well makes you want to swim well and try to sort of live up to what everybody else is doing."

Coventry led the first 100 meters before Hoelzer edged ahead at the third turn. Coventry settled for silver in 2:07.54. Reiko Nakamura of Japan was third.

Therese Alshammar of Sweden won the women's 50 butterfly - a non-Olympic event - in 25.91 seconds for her first world title at age 29.

Danni Miatke of Australia took the silver. Inge Dekker of the Netherlands earned the bronze. American Rachel Komisarz was fifth.

Thorpe was in the stands, surrounded by the Australian team, hours after the shocking news broke that he had a suspicious doping test just months before retiring last year.

The French sports daily L'Equipe reported that Thorpe showed "abnormal levels" of two banned substances in a doping test in May.


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