SWIMMING / EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIPS : Hungary’s Rozsa Sets Breaststroke Record

After shattering his world record in a 100-meter breaststroke preliminary at the European Swimming Championships, Norbert Rozsa of Hungary came back to win the final of the event Tuesday.

Rozsa swam the distance in 1:01.29 in the preliminaries, then came back to clock 1:01.49 in the championship race after a slow start.

“I wasn’t expecting the record in the morning heat, but I did want to break it in the final. I was delayed by 0.50 of a second because I thought someone had false-started,” Rozsa said.

He broke the record of 1:01.45 he set last January at the World Championships in Perth, Australia. That mark was later equaled by Vasili Ivanov of the Soviet Union. Ivanov did not make it to the final Tuesday.

In the final, Rozsa edged Britain’s Adrian Moorhouse, who finished in 1:01.88.

In an upset in the men’s 200-meter freestyle final, Poland’s Artur Wojdat defeated world champion and record-holder Giorgio Lamberti of Italy in 1:48.10. Lamberti finished in 1:48.15. The world record is 1:46.69.

France’s Catherine Plewinski took the women’s 100-meter freestyle in 56.20 seconds and Krisztina Egerszegi of Hungary won the women’s 400-meter medley in 4:39.78.

The Soviet Union’s Olga Sedakova was the synchronized swimming champion with 180.286 points, ahead of Greece’s Christina Thalassinidou’s 178.800.