Two golds for U.S. swimmer Missy Franklin

SHANGHAI, July 30 (UPI) -- American Missy Franklin picked up two gold medals Saturday and Michael Phelps won his second individual gold at the 2011 World Swimming Championships.

Franklin, 16, was a wire-to-wire winner in the women's 200-meter backstroke for her first career gold medal and then anchored the U.S. women's team in the 4x100-meter medley relay, a race the Americans also led throughout.

Franklin took the 200 in 2 minutes, 5.10 seconds, nearly a second ahead of silver-medalist Belinda Hocking of Australia (2:06.06) and more than 2.5 seconds ahead of third-place finisher Sharon van Rouwendaal of the Netherlands (2:07.78).

Franklin teamed with Natalie Coughlin, Rebecca Soni and Dana Vollmer for the relay win, in 3:52.36 seconds, well ahead of silver-medalist China (3:55.61) with Australia taking third (3:57.13).

Phelps was timed in 50.71 seconds in winning the 100-meter butterfly with Polish swimmer Konrad Czerniak second at 51.15. Tyler McGill of the United States took third in 51.26.

It was the third consecutive world gold for Phelps in the 100-meter butterfly, which he won at the 2008 Olympics and the 2009 world championships. He won the 200-meter butterfly earlier this week and was part of a gold-medal-winning U.S. 4x200-meter freestyle relay. He also has two silvers and a relay bronze this week with one race -- the 4x100-meter freestyle relay -- remaining Sunday.

Brazilian swimmer Cesar Cielo took the gold in the men's 50-meter freestyle. He was timed in 21.52, beating Italian Luca Dotto by 0.38 seconds with third place going to France's Alain Bernard (21.92). Cielo also won the 50-meter butterfly in this year's championships.

Inge Dekker of the Netherlands just beat Swede Therese Alshammar to take the gold in the women's 50-meter butterfly. Dekker's time was 25.71 and Alshammar, the world-record holder in the event, touched the wall in 25.76 seconds. France's Melanie Henique won the bronze medal in 25.86.

Britain's Rebecca Adlington finished first in the women's 800-meter freestyle, with 2009 world champion Lotte Friis of Denmark winning the silver. Adlington's time was 8:17.51, 0.69 seconds better than Friis. U.S. swimmer Kate Ziegler, who finished in 8:23.36, was third.