Australia's Melissa Gorman beat Olympic champion Larisa Ilchenko in a sprint finish Tuesday to win the women's 5-kilometer open water swimming race at the world championships.

Gorman won in 56 minutes, 55.8 seconds in the open sea course off Rome's ancient port of Ostia. Ilchenko took the silver medal, 0.5 seconds behind, and Poliana Okimoto of Brazil was third, 3.5 seconds back.

The race was originally scheduled for Sunday but was postponed by two days after rough seas destroyed the starting dock and timing equipment. Consequently, swimmers began the race already in the water and an old fashioned banner replaced computerized touch pads at the finish line.

Gorman timed her final stroke better than Ilchenko and was able to reach up higher than the Russian and slap the banner first.

Ilchenko attributed the loss to a problem with her left leg, and she was limping when she came ashore.

"I never expected to see a banner like that at world championships. The biggest problem was my leg, though," Ilchenko said. "I gave it everything I had, but in the last 15 meters you needed to work a lot with your legs and I wasn't able to."

The 23-year-old Gorman was racing 5K for the first time in an international meet. She finished 15th in the 10K race at last year's Beijing Olympics.

Gorman will also race 10K on Wednesday, then she is entered for the 800m and 1,500m freestyle races in the pool next week.

The last Australian woman to win an open water race at worlds was Melissa Cunningham in 1994, when the competition was first held in Rome, with open water contested in nearby Terracina.

Open water was contested in Beijing for the first time at an Olympics and Ilchenko won in a sprint there. The Russian has also won 5K races at the last two world championships, as well as the 10K race in 2007. She had never lost a race at a major competition, including Olympics, worlds and open water worlds.

(Xinhua News Agency July 22, 2009)