By Alan Baldwin
PARIS (Reuters) – Sweden’s world record holder Sarah Sjostrom completed a freestyle sprint double by adding the women’s 50 metres gold to her 100 title at the Paris Olympics on Sunday.
Australia’s Meg Harris, a gold medallist in the 4×100 free relay, took the silver as the only other woman under 24 seconds and China’s Zhang Yufei the bronze for her fifth medal of the Games and ninth of her career.
Sjostrom, 30, is swimming as well as ever in her fifth Olympics and smashed Hungarian Katinka Hosszu’s Olympic record in the semi-finals with a time of 23.66 seconds in her favourite event.
The Swede could not match that time in Sunday’s “splash and dash” at the La Defense Arena, touching the wall in 23.71 after the single length thrash down the pool and then raising two fingers in triumph.
Harris finished 0.26 behind her and Zhang was 0.49 off the Sjostrom’s pace.
Sjostrom, silver medallist in the 50m at Tokyo three years ago, now has six individual Olympic medals from three Games — three golds, two silvers and a bronze.
That number pales in comparison to the 23 individual medals she has won at world championships, plus two relays.
All three medallists could add to their tallies in the later 4x100m medley relay.
(Additional reporting by Rohith Nair, Editing by Hugh Lawson)
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