Italian swimming sensation Sara Curtis produced another spectacular performance at the Paris 2026 European Aquatics Championships, breaking the women’s 50m backstroke world record for the second successive night and securing her first senior European long-course gold medal.

The 19-year-old clocked an extraordinary 26.56 seconds at the Olympic Aquatic Centre, improving on the world record she had established just a day earlier. The stunning achievement further underlined Curtis’ emergence as one of the brightest young stars in international swimming.

The evening also witnessed an exceptional performance from Hungary’s Kristof Milak, the Paris 2024 Olympic champion. Milak defeated France’s Maxime Grousset in the men’s 100m butterfly, touching the wall in a new European record of 49.48 seconds.

His performance eclipsed Grousset’s previous European mark of 49.68 seconds and brought Milak within just 0.03 seconds of Caeleb Dressel’s world record set at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

Milak later returned to the pool for Hungary in the men’s 4x100m freestyle relay, producing a sensational final-leg split of 46.29 seconds to help his country claim the European title alongside Hubert Kos, Szebasztian Szabo and Nandor Nemeth.

The split was faster than the official individual 100m freestyle world-record time of 46.40 seconds, set by China’s Pan Zhanle at the Paris 2024 Olympics. However, relay splits are not recognized as individual world records because swimmers taking over after the opening leg benefit from a flying start.

With Curtis rewriting the world record books and Milak delivering a European record and a spectacular relay performance, Paris 2026 produced another memorable night of elite swimming at the Olympic Aquatic Centre.