'That hurt!' Dressel digs deep to win 100m freestyle world title

American Caeleb Dressel broke the pain barrier as he swam the second-fastest 100 metres freestyle in history to retain his world title on Thursday.

The 22-year-old, who swept to seven world titles two years ago, clocked a jaw-dropping 46.96 seconds in Gwangju to win swimming's blue riband event, with Olympic champion Kyle Chalmers taking silver.

"It hurt, it hurt really bad," said Dressel. "You don't get that magical feeling every night, you just got to shut the brain off and go," added the tattooed pin-up.

"I wanted to try to zone out the best I could, just let that instinct to training take over and put my head down, sacrifice the body and get my hand on the wall."
"He took off and from then on it was really a chasing-down sort of a game. That the last 50 is his strength and I kind of saw him put his head down and take off a little bit."
- Dressel dynamite -
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"There's things I've already thought about where I can get better."