AFP, Berlin :
Germany’s Alexandra Wenk broke the 35-year-old national record, previously held by a former East German swimmer, for the women’s 200m Individual Medley at the Olympic trials in Berlin on Saturday.
Wenk, from Munich, clocked 2:11.41 minutes, well under the qualifying mark of 2:14.12 needed for the Rio de Janeiro games, to shave three tenths of a second off the previous German record set by former GDR swimmer Ute Geweniger in 1981.
Geweniger’s time of 2:11.73 was the world record for 11 years until it was broken by China’s Li Lin at the 1992 Olympics and has been lowered a further six times since.
“I looked up at the scoreboard and thought: ‘ I don’t understand’,” said a shocked Wenk, who won a bronze medal at the 4x100m mixed medley relay at the world championships last year in Kazan, Russia.
“It’s nice to get the German record, but to keep up at international level, you have to go even faster.”
Wenk’s new personal best is short of the current world record, set by Hungary’s ‘Iron Lady’ Katinka Hosszu last year in Kazan, who swam 2:06.12 in winning gold last August at the world championships.
