Ellen Walshe and Eoin Corby both set Irish records at the World Aquatics Swimming Championships (25m) at the Duna Arena in Budapest on Friday morning, with Walshe's feat coming in the fastest 100m butterfly race in history.
Walshe, who has already lowered six Irish records this week, continued her form with a new Irish standard as the USA's Gretchen Walsh set a new world record of 53.24 seconds.
The Templeogue swimmer's time of 56.17 seconds saw her finish second to Walsh and through to the semi-final in fifth place overall.
Speaking after the race, Walshe said: "It’s amazing to be part of a heat like that, the girls are so talented, and it will be a great semi tonight and maybe a final tomorrow.
"I’m hurting today, my legs are pretty sore, but I’ve just got to tidy up the small things and hopefully there’s a little bit more tonight, maybe a 55, who knows."
Corby set his first Irish record in the heats of the 200m breaststroke, touching the wall in 2:06.45 to erase Uiseann Cooke’s 2021 record of 2:06.81. The 22-year-old was sixth in his heat, but failed to progress to the semi-finals.
Corby said: "I’m very happy, funnily enough I felt kind of weird in the warm-up and I just kind of put that aside.
"I knew I was training well coming into the competition, so I just kind of focused on that, took that into the race and tried to race some of the lads beside me and I got the Irish senior record so I’m very happy with that."
Ellie McCartney swam her second-best time in the 200m breaststroke clocking 2:23.26 to finish sixth in her heat on her World Championships debut.
Walshe returns to the pool this evening at 5.20pm and will be joined by Shane Ryan, who swims in the final of the 50m backstroke (5.12pm).
