Present the silver medals for triple Olympic champion Stephanie Rice, previous world champ Jessicah Schipper and first-time being medallist Matt TargettIt acquired world records to refute both Rice and Schipper as one more five world records chop, carrying the total to 11 in two days of a rivalry in which performance-enhancing suit technology has been allowed.
Among those to fall last night was Leisel Jones' 100m swimming stroke smudge, as Olympic 200m swimming stroke champion Rebecca Soni became the first woman to smash 1:05, dipping the normal from 1:05.09 to 1:04.84.
Brenton Rickard, was extremely sure coming into Rome declaring at the national team's pre-competition press conference: "I am here to win the world championships."
He has definitely served his apprenticeship. His set of slight medals includes Olympic silver in Beijing, Commonwealth Games silver and bronze in 2006, two silver medals from the world little route championships and a silver from the Pan Pacific championships.
In eight years as a worldwide swimmer, he had never won an individual gold medal at a major championship.
So it was a long time coming, but he did it right when it did, swimming the fastest 100m breaststroke in history, 58.58sec, to break Olympic gold medallist Kosuke Kitajima's world record of 58.91sec.
