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Peaty, Sjostrom grab spotlight at world championships

Budapest - Hosszu defends 200m individual medley title in front of home crowd

With Katie Ledecky taking the night off, Adam Peaty and Sarah Sjostrom shared the spotlight on Monday at the world championships.
Hungary's Katinka Hosszu defended her women's 200m individual medley title in front of her home crowd.
Hosszu clocked 2min 07.00sec to take the gold medal with Japan's Yui Ohashi in silver at 0.91sec and Madisyn Cox of the United States earning bronze, 2.71sec behind.
Peaty romped to victory in the 100-metre breaststroke, while Sjostrom just missed breaking her own world record in the 100 butterfly.
Now sporting a massive lion tattoo on his left arm, Peaty made the turn under his world-record pace from last summer's Rio Olympics but faded a bit on the return lap to touch in 57.47 seconds. The British star missed his mark of 57.13 yet still turned in the second-fastest time ever in the event.
His ultimate goal is to become the first breaststroker to break the 57-second barrier, a quest he has dubbed "Project 56."
"I've a few more 57 races to get down to 56, but I'm just going to follow that curve now and see where I can go," he said.
The silver went to Kevin Cordes of the United States at 58.79 and Russia's Kirill Prigoda claimed the bronze (59.05). American Cody Miller, the bronze medalist in Rio, finished fifth.
Having already set a world record with her leadoff leg in the 4x100 freestyle relay, Sjostrom nearly took down another mark in the fly with a winning time of 55.53.
That was just 0.05 seconds off the Swede's gold-medal triumph at Rio. When Sjostrom saw the time on the scoreboard, she covered her mouth in surprise.
"It felt like I was going a bit slower than I did yesterday actually, so maybe butterfly is about being all relaxed and then you can be even faster," said Sjostrom, who didn't look at all tired a day after racing four times on the opening day of swimming.
Australia's Emma McKeon (56.18) grabbed the silver and Kelsi Worrell of the U.S. (56.37) settled for bronze. Seventeen-year-old Canadian Penny Oleksiak, a breakout star in Rio with four medals, finished fourth.
Britain claimed another gold when Benjamin Proud touched first at 22.79 in the men's 50 butterfly, a non-Olympic event. Brazil's Nicolas Santos earned the silver (22.84) and Ukraine's Andrii Govorov grabbed the bronze (22.84) just ahead of American Caeleb Dressel, who came into the final as the fastest qualifier.
The 12,000-seat Duna Arena was packed for the final event of the night, the women's 200 individual medley. Home country favorite Katinka Hosszu was the world-record holder and favored to win gold.
After claiming two golds on Sunday, Ledecky's lone race was the morning preliminaries of the 1,500 freestyle. She breezed through the grueling race in 15 minutes, 47.57 seconds - nearly 18 seconds faster than second-fastest qualifier Mireia Belmonte of Spain.
The final is Tuesday night.
"It felt good," Ledecky said. "I know how to manage the schedule. I just kind of have to work through the prelims as easy as I can to keep myself rested."