Paralympian Nikita Howarth stormed to a new world record in the pool today at the IDM German Open.
Howarth swam 1min 18.65s in the women's S7 100m butterfly. She eclipsed the previous record of 1:20.14 previously held by American Mallory Weggemann since 2009.
Howarth is New Zealand's youngest Paralympian, when she made her debut in London four years ago at 13. She's ranked first in the world in four events.
"It was great to see Nikita set a new world record in this event. All the more outstanding considering she came into this competition without a taper as this was viewed more as competition training opportunity rather than an event Nikita was going to achieve a personal best performance at," Malcolm Humm, high performance director at Paralympics New Zealand, said.