Australian 13-year-old Tiffany Thomas Kane made her 2015 IPC World Championships debut a big one, breaking the world record in the SB6 100 breaststroke.
Kane first broke the Oceania record in prelims, going 1:36.59. But she chopped well over a second off that time in the final, going 1:34.95 to take home a gold medal and bag the world record. The previous record was 1:35.51, belonging to American Mallory Weggemann from 2010.
That’s a big international accolade for Kane, who has yet to reach her 14th birthday. Kane was born in August of 2001.
She’s already etched her name into the world record books prior to this week, though. Earlier this year, Kane set the 50 breast world record in the SB6 class at the Australian Swimming Championships.
SB6 is a special breaststroking class – IPC athletes often swim down a class in breaststroke compared to the other three strokes because breaststroke is leg and trunk intensive. (You can read more about decoding the IPC classification system here.)
But Kane does not swim down a class in breaststroke, competing in the S6 classification for her other strokes and SB6 for breaststroke.
Kane will compete in four more races this week, all in the S6 class. She swims the 50 fly tomorrow, the 50 free on Thursday, the 100 back on Saturday and the 100 free on Sunday.
She is most likely not classified correctly for the breaststroke. 13 year olds shouldnt be setting world records.
I shoulda played the tape before commenting cause she isn’t a misclassified CP athletes. She is a dwarf though a really athletic and probably right at the height maximum so she is likely to rule this class for As long as she wants to