BUDAPEST, July 23 -- Muscle pain did not deter Sun Yang from winning the men's 400m freestyle world championship title three times in a row. The prolific Chinese swimmer finished the race with the fastest timing of the year at the FINA World Championships here on Sunday.

Sun complained of muscle pain going into Budapest. "I trained too hard before the competition," said the 26-year-old after touching the wall first in 3:41.38. "My muscles are tired and my arms hurt particularly badly."

Sun was confident about his chances of winning the race after six laps as no finalists were close enough to catch up to him.

The runner-up Mack Horton, who edged Sun in 0.13 seconds to grab the Olympic title in Rio last year, was 2.47 seconds behind Sun this time.

"I didn't realized that I could win in such a dominant way," said Sun. "My rivals didn't race badly today, but I swam better this time."

Sun credited the result to his work with coaches Zheng Kunliang and Denis Cotterell.

"My coaches have been working so hard to help me to improve," said Sun who even cried out during some particularly tense training sessions. "A few days ago, I even wanted to give up and disappear during training. But then I thought about my coaches. I need to respect them and I want to meet their standards."

"When I worked it out, I made progress," said Sun.

The Australian coach Cotterell said he was pleased with Sun's performance Sunday evening.

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