World Cup winner Gao Chang claimed the women's 50m backstroke title in an Asian record while Australian Olympian Jessicah Schipper won the women's 100m butterfly at China's autumn national swimming meet in Tangshan in north China��s Hebei Province on December 11.

The 17-year-old Gao, titlist in the 50m back at Melbourne short course World Cup last week, clocked an Asian record time and her personal best of 28.48 seconds, leaving Yang Li in the second place in 29.01 and Xuyang Longzi, third in 29.30.

"I paid a lot of attention to her start in recent training and made a special plan to shorten her reaction time, which worked well," said Gao's coach Yao Ying.

Schipper, fourth-place finisher in the 100m fly in Athens, chalked up the title as she swam in 59.61.

The 18-year-old from Queensland Academy of Sports was invited together with her 13 schoolmates to take part in the Chinese tournament.

Zhou Yafei, member of the 4x100m medley relay winning team at the Barcelona World Championships, came back from a month of rest to finish second in 59.75 and her national teammate Xu Yanwei, representing Shanghai, was third in 59.82.

Yao was obviously satisfied with her 20-year-old protegee.

"Zhou did a great job tonight. Although the time was bad, she finally came back into action after her injury. After all, she resumed training a week ago," said Yao.

Zhou strained her neck and was laid off for a month.

"I have not recovered completely yet and still need some more time for rehabilitation," said Zhou.

Qi Hui redeemed her loss on Friday in her pet event of the 200m breaststroke by winning the 200m individual medley in two minutes 14.26 seconds.

Liu Jing from Beijing came second in 2:15.63 and host swimmer Zhao Jing took bronze in 2:15.79.

Qi was disqualified from the 200m breaststroke for false start as chief referee Wang Yan explained that the former world record holder moved her feet before jumping into the water.

"I didnot concentrate when I started," recalled Qi, who once created the world record of two minutes 22.99 seconds before Amanda Beard rewrote the world mark in 2.22.44 in the U.S. Olympic trials in July.

"I have not been training systematically for three months, so I am not in a good form at the national meet," said the 19-year-old.

Shanghai grabbed the women's 4x100m freestyle relay gold in 3:47.24 and Zhejiang came second in 3:48.99. The Queensland team finished third in 3:50.12.

Beijing swimmer Zhang Lin, 17, successfully defended his 200m freestyle title in 1:50.67 while Zheng Jiang's Zheng Kunliang bagged silver in 1:51.59 and Cai Li, also from Zhejiang, was third in 1:51.67.

Zeng Qiliang of Guangdong won the men's 50m breaststroke in 28.51.

Silver went to Wang Haibo from Zhejiang on 28.78 and Fujian swimmer Wang Mengjian was third in 28.95.

Source: Xinhua