Maggie Mac Neil has struck again.
On Friday, the 22-year-old London swimming legend competed in the 50-metre backstroke at the FINA World Swimming Championships, once again taking home the gold and setting a new world record at 25.25 seconds.
In December 2021, Mac Neil first broke the 50-m backstroke world record with a performance of 20.27 seconds in Abu Dhabi. This year in Melbourne, Australia, she improved on her time by 0.002 seconds
Mac Neil also took home gold in the 50-m butterfly on Wednesday, an event for which she holds the Canadian record. Her time was 24.64 seconds, less than a quarter of a second off the world record in this race.
Mac Neil also medalled in the women’s 4×100 freestyle and mixed 4×50 relays, leaving her with four pieces of hardware from this year’s short course championships.
“I’m ecstatic. I knew it would be hard to go a best time but I just really wanted to see the improvements and I’m glad I did it,” Mac Neil said. “I’ve been learning so much from each swim that I’ve been doing and I think I was able to fix all those little errors tonight.”
Mac Neil swam alongside Kylie Masse, who hails from La Salle, Ontario. The two have now won the same number of medals, overall, from long-course and short-course world championships. At 15 medals each, Masse and Mac Neil have respectively collected more than any other Canadian.
The world short course championships continue through Sunday.