Rare loss for Phelps

Michael Phelps suffered his first defeat in international competition for four years on Tuesday when Paul Biedermann convincingly beat him in the 200metres freestyle at the World Championships in Rome.

The 14-time Olympic champion last failed to get gold when he was edged out by fellow American Ian Crocker in the 100m butterfly at the worlds in Montreal.

Phelps had not been beaten in the 200m free since the Athens Olympics in 2004 but Biedermann produced an astonishing swim to triumph by a body length and also set a new world record of one minute 42.00 seconds in the process.

The German has now claimed two gold medals and consigned two previously untouchable world records to history at the Foro Italico. On Sunday he had brought down Ian Thorpe's iconic 400m freestyle mark before following it up on Tuesday to stun the American who was glum on the podium.

Biedermann has clearly benefited from donning the Arena X-Glide while Phelps has remained in his Speedo LZR, revolutionary last year but now overtaken by the all-polyurethane suits.

Great Britain's Gemma Spofforth is the only Speedo-clad individual champion in Italy, winning the 100m backstroke in world-record time, while Jaked, Adidas and Arena rule the waves.

Spofforth, who twice became the second fastest in history over 100m backstroke on Monday, set a new mark of 58.12 ahead of Anastasia Zueva of Russia and Australia's Emily Seebohm.

Federica Pellegrini set her second mark of the championships so far when she lowered her own 200m freestyle world record to 1:53.67 in the semis.

Cameron Van Der Burgh dipped 0.15 inside Franca Da Silva's three-month-old mark in the 50m breaststroke final in 26.74 ahead of Germany's Hendrick Feldwehr with Silva in fourth.

Italy had more reason to cheer when Alessia Filippi won the 1,500m freestyle ahead of Lotte Friis and Camelia Potec, Japan's Junya Koga claimed the 100m backstroke title ahead of Helge Meeuw and Aschwin Wildeboer and Takeshi Matsuda was fastest through ahead of Phelps in the 200m butterfly.