Laure Manaudou of France and Germany's Helge Meeuw pulled out of title defenses at the European championships on Thursday. Manaudou withdrew from the 800 meters freestyle heats to concentrate on her 100m backstroke title defense, which she began competently earlier in the morning session. Meeuw, an ailing member of an already severely reduced German team, pulled out of the men's 50m backstroke heats. Suffering from sinusitis, he had also missed Tuesday's 100m backstroke heats. Manaudou, who won the 200 backstroke on Wednesday, qualified for Thursday evening's 100 backstroke semifinals in one minute 00.78 seconds, trailing only the time of 1:00.72 set by Spain's former Russian Nina Zhivanevskaya. Olympic champion Yana Klochkova qualified for the women's 200 meters individual medley semifinals. On Wednesday, Milorad Cavic and Alexander Dale Oen set continental records. Cavic won the 50-meter butterfly title and Oen won the 100m breaststroke. Laure Manaudou of France, the Olympic champion in the 400m freestyle, won her eighth career European title and first this year in the 200m backstroke, finishing well clear in 2 minutes, 7.99 seconds. Anastasia Zueva of Russia was second in 2:09.59 and Nikolett Szepesi of Hungary was third in 2:09.90. Cavic broke the butterfly record for the second time in two days and then said he could have threatened the world record if his finish had been better. The Serbian swimmer, who was born and lives in the United States, finished in 23.11 to beat defending champion Sergiy Breus of Ukraine, who was second in 23.48. Rafael Munoz Perez of Spain was third in 23.60. Roland Schoeman of South Africa set the world record of 22.96 in Montreal in 2005. Oen won the 100m breaststroke in European record time of 59.76, beating the previous mark of 59.94 set in 2001 by Roman Sloudnov of Russia. The Norwegian edged Hugues Duboscq for the title by two hundredths of a second, but the Frenchman's time of 59.78 put him in an elite club of only four other swimmers to complete the race in under 1 minute. Oleg Lisogor of Ukraine was third in 1:00.53. Markus Rogan of Austria won the men's 100m backstroke in 54.03, powering down the second lap to overtake Aristeidis Grigoriadis, who qualified fastest and turned first but faded to finish second in 54.27. Defending champion Arkady Vyatchanin was third in 54.45. Chantal Groot led a Dutch 1-2 in the 50 butterfly, finishing in 26.03 to edge teammate Inge Dekker. Sviatlana Khakhlova of Belarus was third in 26.52 and world record holder Therese Alshammar of Sweden finished fourth in 26.69. In the diving competition, Illya Kvasha took gold in the 1-meter springboard with 454.65 points for his first major diving title. The Ukrainian beat defending champion Joona Puhakka of Finland. __
