Swimming

A Soviet team broke the European record in the men’s 400-meter freestyle relay with a time of 3:17.11 at the European Swimming Championships at Athens.

Alexander Popov, Veniamin Tainovitch, Pavel Khnykin and Gennadiy Prigoda broke the previous record of 3:18.33 set by the Soviet team at the Seoul Olympic Games in 1988. Prigoda was a member of the Olympic team.

The world record in the event is 3:16.53, set by the United States in Seoul.

In the 200-meter breaststroke, Britain’s Nick Gillingham broke his meet record to win in 2:12.55.

He defeated heavily favored Norbert Rozsa of Hungary by three hundreths of a second to take his second European title in the event.

Rozsa, who broke a world record in the 100-meter breaststroke Tuesday, lagged throughout the race. A last-minute spurt put him in second place with 2:12.58, barely ahead of Spain’s Sergio Lopez, who finished in 2:13.40.

Rozsa said he had been feeling sick after the morning preliminaries.