The USA’s Olympic gold medallist Michael Phelps broke his own American short course record in the 200m butterfly at the Maryland Swim Championships with a time of 1:39:65 beating his old record set in 2006 of 1:39:70.
As the event was held at the Naval Academy, where the pool is measured in yards, not metres, the ‘record’ is deemed unofficial until USA Swimming certifies it.
It was the third win of the weekend for Phelps, who was swimming competitively for the first time in seven weeks won three races over the weekend.
Phelps was quoted as saying “I tried to find out what my splits were when I broke the record back in ’06 and just wanted to see what I could do tonight, I wanted to try and go out and take a shot at it. Coming off the last turn I wanted to stay under as long as I could. That was clearly the difference.”
Phelps who is building for the 2012 Summer Olympics also said that the two years would “fly by.”
