Seven world records beaten at Rio 2016

Seven world records were broken in three Olympic sports on the first few days of competition at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. One of them was beaten twice by the same athlete—Adam Peaty, from Great Britain. He beat the world record in the 100m breaststroke heats on Saturday (Aug. 6) by finishing at 57.55sec. And at the final on Sunday (7), he lowered that to 57.13s.

The women’s swimming competition has also set new world records. The USA’s Katie Ledecky clocked 3m56s46 in the 400m freestyle, whereas Sweden's Sarah Sjöström completed the 100m butterfly race in 55s48. Katinka Hosszú from Hungary finished the 400m individual medley at 4:26.36, and Australia’s relay team did the 4x100m in 3:30.65.

The two other world records came from the men’s weightlifting, where Qingquan Long from China totaled 307 kilos in the snatch plus clean and jerk at the men’s 56kg, and archery, which saw Korea’s Woo-jin Kim score 700 points at the ranking round of the men’s individual competition on Friday (5).

Except for archery, all the other new world records have resulted in gold medals. In addition to the seven world records, three new Olympic records have been set. At the men’s weightlifting, China’s Qingquan Long has made the best Olympic lift in the clean and jerk (170kg).

His fellow country athlete Yajun Li (from the women’s 53kg) beat the Olympic snatch record by lifting 101kg. But she failed to complete all her clean and jerk attempts and ended up in sixth place.

The third Olympic record was also beaten by a Chinese athlete. Li Du totaled 420.7 points in the women’s 10m air rifle. But she won a silver medal as Virginia Thrasher (USA) scored higher in the final.

Translated by Mayra Borges