MELBOURNE - Australia's Lani Pallister completed a sweep of the 400-800-1500m triple at the World Short Course Championships as Canada's Maggie MacNeil broke her own 50m backstroke world mark and two relay records tumbled.
Pallister backed up her 400 and 800 crowns with a dominant swim in the distance event to touch in 15mins 21.43secs and announce herself as a serious threat to superstar Katie Ledecky, who skipped the meet.
"It was a little bit harder than I expected," she said poolside in Melbourne.
"The 800 was probably my best event this week. But I'm just really excited, I couldn't have asked for much better. It's been an incredible experience."
Pallister finished more than 25 seconds clear of second-placed Miyu Namba of Japan.
Defending champion MacNeil led home the United States' Claire Curzan, touching in 25.25 seconds to shave 0.2secs of her old mark set last year.
Australian Mollie O'Callaghan, usually a freestyler, was third.
"I'm ecstatic, I knew it would be hard to swim a best time," MacNeil said after winning her fourth medal of the meet, having shared the 50m butterfly gold with American Torri Huske and two relay bronze.
"I just really wanted to see the improvement even just a couple of hundreds. I am learning so much and I was able to fix all those little errors tonight."
American Ryan Murphy won the men's title in 22.64 ahead of Australia's Issac Cooper and Kacper Stokowski of Poland.
The US team of Kieran Smith, Carson Foster, Trenton Julian and Drew Kibler also set a new world best in the men's 4x200m freestyle, powering home in 6:44.12.
It obliterated the previous best held by Brazil by more than two seconds. Australia was second, also under the old record.