American Shead Breaks WR in Riccione Day 1

In Riccione, Italy the first World Records of the 2012 Masters World Championships, held in long course, have gone down, all in the 100 breaststrokes.

In the men’s 100 breaststroke, American Timothy Shead from Florida, who is one of the most dominant Masters Swimmers in recent history. He swam a 1:14.32 to break the 1:15.42 set by another American Robert Strand in the 60-64 age group in 2008. That’s unofficially 36 World Records broken in Shead’s Masters’ Swimming career.

In the men’s 40-44 age group, Russia’s Vladislav Bragin broke the World Record with a 1:04.40. That took down his own 2011 record at 1:04.86 that was set last November.

Likewise, in the women’s 65-69 age group, Croatia’s Giurgiza Gabrilo destroyed the old World Record with a 1:30.16 to win her age group by 5 seconds. The old mark belonged to Japan’s Nobuko Yasuda at 1:33.23 from November of 2010.

Shortly after, Italy’s own Monica Coro broke the 50-54 mark, also in crushing fashion, with a 1:15.50. That knocked more than two seconds off of the old record, also belonging to her, set a month ago. In less-than 30 days, she’s now taken 4.4 seconds off of this World Record.

Coro placed 21st in this event at the 1978 World Championships in West Berlin.

Expect many more records to fall – and many in this same dominant fashion. One of the odd things about Masters’ World Records is that record-breaking is similar to what one would see in the earlier years of elite swimming – where a new star comes along and just blows away records by unbelievable amounts.

American Jim Montgomery, a 1976 triple Olympic gold medalist, made his debut in the men’s 100 free; he finished 14th in 1:03.29. American Dan Stephenson from Rose Bowl Aquatics won that race in 58.15.

Full Results for the meet are avaiable here.