SINGAPORE — He was one of the young stars expected to take the 5th FINA World Junior Swimming Championships in Singapore by storm, but the United States’ Michael Andrew struggled to find his winning form, missing out on gold in four individual events during the first three days of the world junior meet.

But the 16-year-old, who has been compared to American superstar Michael Phelps, bounced back in style yesterday evening, claiming his first international gold medal by winning the men’s 50m backstroke in a championship record time of 25.13s.

Having established himself as the favourite in the event with the fastest semi-final time of 25.56s, Andrew looked headed for disappointment yet again after a slow start. But the teenager recovered to touch the wall first in a thrilling final, with Canada’s Javier Acevedo (25.46s) and Mohamed Samy, of Egypt (25.54s), winning the silver and bronze respectively.

“Coming into the 50m backstroke final, I was obviously going for the gold and it was really incredible to finally see my name at the top of the leaderboard,” said Andrew, who is home-schooled and trains in a two-lane pool in the backyard of his home in Kansas.

“But not everything went according to plan for me during the race. My start wasn’t as powerful as in the prelims, although I was able to make up ground during the swim.”

The American teenager had the chance to clinch his second gold of the championship moments later in the men’s 50m freestyle final, but fell short by just 0.17s to finish second, with Australia’s Kyle Chalmers (22.19s) taking home the gold.

But the American was quick to recover from the loss. “My focus is now just on doing well in the 50m fly final,” he said. “And my aim for the event is definitely to break the world junior record, because I’m just 0.05s away from that.”

The fourth day of action at the biennial meet also saw three world junior records broken at the OCBC Aquatic Centre. In the evening’s first event — the women’s 50m backstroke semis — Australia’s Minna Atherton clocked a time of 27.92s to beat her own world junior mark of 28.00s, and she heads into tonight’s final looking to complete a clean sweep of the backstroke events.

Turkey’s Viktoria Gunes, who won the women’s 50m breaststroke on Wednesday, was the next to set a new world junior record, clocking a time of 2min 11.03s in the 200m individual medley to win gold.

It was the 17-year-old’s second triumph of the night, following her win in the 100m breaststroke.

“The 200m (individual medley) was a hard race and I was actually aiming to just beat the championship record,” said Gunes. “So I tried my very best and I’m happy to have set a new world junior record, although it was quite close. I still have much to improve on if I want to compete in the 2016 Olympics, but there is still time, so I’ll be training hard for that.”

The US also won their first relay event of the championships, with the men’s 4x200m freestyle relay quartet of Grant Shoults, Maxime Rooney, Sean Grieshop and Grant House winning the final in a world junior record time of 7min 13.76s. Australia (7min 17.76s) and Russia (7min 19.45s) finished second and third.

“This win is a statement of intent from Team USA that we are here to be counted,” said House. “We came with the aim of beating the previous world junior mark and we’re over the moon to have done it. This will give the whole of our team a boost for the remainder of the events and we’re confident we can get more gold medals over the next few days.”

Three other gold medals were awarded last night, with Russia’s Anton Chupkov winning the men’s 200m breaststroke in a new championship record time of 2min 10.19s, while Japan’s Rikako Ikee and American Tamsin Cook also secured the top prize in the women’s 50m butterfly and the women’s 400m freestyle respectively.

There was also good news for Team Singapore yesterday, with the men’s 4x200m relay team of Darren Chua, Dylan Koo, Francis Fong, Chua Wei Feng setting a new national under-17 record of 7min 48.24s in the morning’s heats, while teenager Quah Jing Wen met the Olympic “B” mark with her time of 2min 18.72s in the women’s 200m individual medley heats.

Today’s finals:

Women’s 1,500m freestyle

Men’s 50m butterfly

Women’s 50m backstroke

Men’s 400m Medley

Women’s 4x100m freestyle