World Aquatics Championships 2024: Great Britain’s Laura Stephens wins butterfly for maiden title

Great Britain’s Laura Stephens won a maiden world title in the women’s 200m butterfly at the World Aquatics Championships in Doha.

The 24-year-old swam two minutes 7.35 seconds to become GB’s first individual female world champion since 2011.

“I can’t believe it – all I was thinking about in the last 50m was holding on,” said Stephens.

Later on Thursday, GB’s women took silver in the 4x200m freestyle to secure the nation’s 15th overall medal.

The British quartet of Freya Colbert, Abbie Wood, Lucy Hope and Medi Eira Harris finished in seven minutes 50.90 seconds.

A superb leg from Wood saw Britain lead at the halfway point but China came back to clinch gold as Britain held off a late surge from Australia, who took bronze.

Elsewhere, after breezing through qualification in third place, Duncan Scott finished sixth in the 200m individual medley.

Matt Richards just missed out on a medal in the men’s 100m freestyle, finishing fourth behind China’s world record holder Zhanle Pan in first, Italy’s Alessandro Miressi in second and Hungary’s Nandor Nemeth in third.

Anna Hopkin will go for a first individual world medal on Friday after she swam 53.12 seconds in the women’s 100m freestyle to qualify for the final in second place, behind Dutch swimmer Marrit Steenbergen (52.53 seconds).

Luke Greenbank and Brodie Williams both missed out on qualification for the men’s 200m backstroke, finishing ninth and 12th respectively overall.

In the high diving, which is not an Olympic sport, Britain’s Aidan Heslop won a first world title after executing what was the hardest dive to ever be completed at a worlds.

The 21-year-old’s final dive from the 27m platform scored 151.90 points to give him an overall total of 422.95 and clinch gold ahead of France’s Gary Hunt in silver (413.25) and Catalin-Petru Preda in bronze (410.20).

Great Britain have won three gold, four silver and eight bronze medals at the World Aquatics Championships so far.

A British woman has not won an individual world title since Rebecca Adlington in 2011 and Stephens’ triumph also made her the first Briton to win a world medal in the 200m butterfly event.

It also marked Britain’s first swimming gold medal at the championships in Qatar.

Londoner Stephens won silver in the same event at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham in 2022 but had never won a world championships medal before.

She led the race from start to finish but had to push hard in the final 50m to fend off Denmark’s Helena Bach, who finished second in two minutes 7.44 seconds, and Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Lana Pudar (two minutes 7.92 seconds), who was third.

“I think I executed well – it’s all about the Olympics this summer and we’re still working towards that and this is great, but we’ve still got some hard work to go,” said Stephens.

All three medallists featured in the final of the event at the 2023 world championships but did not make it to the podium.

Meanwhile, none of last year’s medal winners were involved this year with several of the world’s top swimmers choosing not to compete in Doha and instead focus on training for the Paris Olympics.