Third placed Australia's Jessica Ashwood, first placed Katie Ledecky of the U.S. and second placed Sharon van Rouwendaal of the Netherlands (L-R) pose with their medals after the women's 400m freestyle final at the Aquatics World Championships in Kazan, Russia, yesterday. Right: China's Sun Yang celebrates after winning the men's 400m freestyle final.

DPA/Kazan, Russia

China’s Sun Yang and America’s Katie Ledecky won the first individual medals of the 2015 world swimming championships in the 400m freestyles yesterday while Sweden’s Sarah Sjostrom set a new world record in the women’s 100m butterfly.
Russia’s men drew the largest cheers of the day from a vociferous home support at the Kazan Arena when they finished second behind France in the 4x100m freestyle relay. The women’s honour in the same discipline went to Australia.
Defending champion Sun trailed James Guy for most of the race but was rarely more than a few hundredths of a second behind the Briton. Eventually the Chinese made his move to go in front at 350m and was in control during a comfortable last length to claim a third successive 400m world title. Sun’s winning time of three minutes 42.58 seconds bested Guy by 1.17 seconds with Canada’s Ryan Cochrane taking third, a further 0.84 behind.
Moments earlier Sjostrom set a new world record of 55.74 seconds in the 100m butterfly during the second semi-final. She beat the record previously set by American Dana Vollmer at the 2012 Olympics by 0.24 seconds as she progressed to Monday’s final where she will defend the title won in 2013.
Olympic and world champion Ledecky had little drama as she led from the front to win in three minutes 59.13 seconds but missed out on breaking her own world record having despite being on course to do so at the half-way stage.
Sharon van Rouwendaal of the Netherlands took silver, 3.89 seconds behind, meaning Ledecky remains the only woman to go under four minutes without the aid of a now banned polyurethan swimsuit. Bronze went to Australia’s Jessica Ashwood, more than 4.2 seconds behind Ledecky.
European champion Jeanette Ottesen reached the final second behind Sjostrom while 17-year-old Chinese hopeful Chen Xinyi qualified seventh.
Yesterday’s medal events concluded with the men’s 4x100m freestyle relay which was played out to defeaning noise in the converted Arena football stadium.
Mehdy Metella, Florent Manaudou, Fabien Gilot and Jeremy Stravius won to retain the title for France in 3:10.74, with Russia 0.45 seconds behind in what had been a straight race for gold. Italy took third but were well behind the winning French.
The Australian quartet of Emily Seebohm, Emma McKeon, Bronte Campbell and Cate Campbell triumphed in a time of 3:31.48, finishing 2.19 seconds ahead of the Netherlands. The United States claimed bronze, an additional 0.94 seconds back.
In other semi-finals, Hungary’s ‘Iron Lady’ Katinka Hosszu qualified first in 2:06.84 to defend her 200m medley title in the final.  Britain’s Siobhan-Marie O’Connor qualified second but was more than 1.6 seconds slower.
Brazil’s Cesar Cielo, two-time defending champion in the men’s 50m butterfly, also lived to fight another day having squeezed into the final in eighth place, just one hundredth ahead of Santo Condorelli of Canada. Manaudou topped the sheets in 22.84 seconds.
In the men’s 100m breaststroke, Britain’s Adam Peaty qualified first in 58.18 seconds and is set for a fascinating duel with South Africa’s Olympic champion Cameron van der Burgh (58.49) for gold today.