Belmonte smashes 1500m WR

Madrid - Short-course 1500m world champion Spain's Mireia Belmonte broke the discipline world record by almost three seconds at her national championships on Friday.

The new mark of 15 minutes, 19.71 seconds set during the Spanish short-course national championships at Sabadell takes over from New Zealander Lauren Boyle's previous world record mark of 15min 22.68sec.

Belmonte won four titles at the recent Doha 2014 short-course worlds with gold in the 200m butterfly, 400m medley (where she won both in world record times) and also the 400m and 800m freestyle.