A shocked Emily Seebohm has readjusted her dodgy eyesight to focus on a world record after recording the fastest-ever women's 100m backstroke swim at an Olympic Games.
Seebohm thought her contact lenses were playing tricks when she saw her Olympic record time of 58.23 seconds in Sunday morning's 100m backstroke heats in London.
"My God," Seebohm said.
"From my reaction, you could probably tell I was pretty shocked.
"I would have liked a 58.9, but what I did was incredible."
Seebohm's time was the fastest women's 100m backstroke in a textile suit and ranked third quickest ever - just eleven one-hundredths of a second shy of Brit Gemma Spofforth's world record set in 2009.
"I did look at the 50m split and saw that I was 0.1 (seconds) under the world record," Seebohm said.
"And I was just like `don't get over your head, just keep going and go as hard as you can'.
"My goal is too keep moving forward and maybe the world record in the final."
The 20-year-old Seebohm collected her second Olympic gold medal on Saturday night for her heat swim in Australia's triumphant 4x100m freestyle relay, after winning the 4x100m medley in Beijing four years ago.
She said the Olympic record helped erase a sickness stained last year, when swine flu cruelled her world championships.
"I have trained very hard since coming back from last year," she said.
"And having all the disappointments I had last year obviously keeps me going and gets me a time like this today.
"It was definitely not the hardest I could go but ... it obviously just showed that I wasn't good last year, I'm happy that people know that I'm still around and that I'm smashing it."
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