Petra Schneider of the GDR would have finished sixth in the 400m medley at Singapore 2025 World Championships with her 1982 generation-busting 4:36.10 World record.

Why am I reminding you of this? Well, because that's how far we have to go back to find the biggest margin of victory in the event: Schneider thumped her teammate Kathleen Nord by 7.41sec, the bronze to American Tracey Caulkins a further 1.13sec away.

We know how they did it, of course, and that's one of the things that makes today's 'until now' follow-up line so special: with her 4mins 25.78 Championship record, Summer McIntosh confined the GDR's Mind-The-Gap moment to history:

7.48sec (or 2.02 for every 100)

They didn't have champagne waiting for McIntosh when she claimed a record fourth gold plus bronze in the greatest women's 800m race in history yesterday. Pity, for if they had had a butler sent to serve her on poolside, he would have had time to pop the cork, pour the bubbles and offer a toast before Dolphin Jenna Forrester and Japan's Mio Narita stopped the clock in a snap at 4:33.26, a 12-year-old half a second away and 7.98sec adrift the 18-year-old champion - and faster than the 1982 champion fuelled on state harm:

The huge gap between gold and the rest came down to a simple truth: gold was won in an outlier time that world-championship waters had never witnessed before, by a swimmer who'd gone even faster elsewhere; and silver was won in an excellent time that more than 20 swimmers had clocked before, between 2008-09 (4 shiny suit times in the mix) and 2025. The fastest versatility queen we've ever seen vs the rest chasing the 4:30 mark but still with a few seconds to go.

We conclude this article below with a note on the other outlier: 4:33, by a 12 year old.

This file is now part of the SOS Archive...