Barbora Seemanova (CZE) lifted the 200m freestyle title for the third time with the fastest swim of her career - and then by some

The 26-year-old first claimed it back in 2020, in 1:56.27, then a national record. Then in 2024, a 1:55.37 was good for the crown.

Now, it's 1:54.38, a championship record inside her previous high bar of 1:55.18 from the APRace in 2024. One of the things that made the difference: having a pacemaker like World 100m record holder and champion Marrit Steenbergen (NED), who served as a fast- moving target for Seemanova.

The Dutch ace ended up with her own career best, 1:54.65, for silver in her second final of the evening, after having taken a shot at the 50m backstroke podium but failed a swing of an arm shy.

The race raised Seemanova from 30th to 14th on the all-time ranking in the event, while Steenbergen leapt from 40th in 1:55.51 to 17th.

The bronze was gone in 1:55.81, to Freya Colbert, a member of Great Britain's victorious 4x200m free quartet win day 1.

The race was a tight tussle throughout, Steenbergen with feet on wall at 55.81, 0.07sec ahead of Seemanova at half-way. The gap between then was 0.05 at the last turn, the sprint home looked like it might go wither way until about 15m from home, when Seemanova's shifted from a chaser to a rival racing a Dutch pace-setter feeling the heat of twice the distance she's made her own at every level in the past two years barring the blip of a 7th place here in Paris at the Olympic Games two years ago.

The championship record became the new fastest win ever, overtaking the victory speed of a Frenchwoman watching on as part of a French media team just along the bench from where SOS is perched: Charlotte Bonnet clocked 1:54.95 in 2018.

Meanwhile, Seemanova holds other records in the event:

• the smallest winning margin: she pipped Italian legend Federica Pellegrini by 0.02s in 2020;
• the tightest podium (gold→bronze): in 2020, the gap between her victory and Brit Freya Anderson was 0.15.

Over 200m, the only gold Seemanova missed at the past four editions of the European showcase was 2024, when many of the best did not attend.

That year was a weird and unique season of Olympics, Worlds and Europeans as decision-makers opted to make Covid-pandemic contract catch-up their priority, regardless of its impact on athlete interest and the thread of a history that has now had a whole sea of new asterisks poured into it - another reality that serves athletes poorly, both those who show up, and those who do not. Some nations will look back at 2024 for decades to come and understand why they cannot report a result that represents their 'best championships' ever - and they will all know why.

The History Files below ...