Mexico’s 21-year-old Marcos Zarate of Mexico set the first of them in startling fashion during the morning heats by taking 11 seconds off the SM3 mark set in 2014 in the men’s 200 metres medley final as he clocked 4min 19.48sec.

Zarate was one of 35 Mexican athletes in Berlin and is now hoping to carry his world-beating form to the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics, with the national team selection due to be announced next month.

In the evening session, London 2019 world champion Rogier Dorsman of The Netherlands, competing in the SM11 visually-impaired category, broke the second world record of the day in the men’s 200m medley final with a time of 2:20.40.

Once the calculations had been made that earned the Dutchman gold with 1035 points, ahead of two others who have broken world records in Berlin - Spain’s SM5 swimmer Antoni Ponce Bertran, second with 1002 after clocking 2:48.75, and Mark Malyar of Israel, an SM7 swimmer, who earned 957 after finishing in 2:33.34.

Jia Ma of China, an SM11 swimmer, won the women’s 200m medley gold after finishing in 2:47.31 ahead of Dutch SM11 athlete Liesette Bruinsma, who clocked 2:47.40.

Bronze went to Bruinsma’s team mate Lisa Kruger, in the SM10 category, who finished in 2:29.23.

The women’s 100m backstroke title went to home swimmer Nora Meister, in the S6 category, who finished in 1:22.49, with silver going to fellow German and S6 athlete Verena Schott, who clocked 1:23.39.

Bronze went to Ukraine’s S6 swimmer Anna Hontar in 1:24.57.

Ukraine’s S12 swimmer Yaroslav Denysenko won the men’s 100m backstroke, finishing in 1:01.28.

Silver went to China’s S6 athlete Hongguang Jia, who finished in 1:13.37, and bronze to Malyar, who clocked 1:11.90.

China’s Dong Lu set an Asian S5 record of 41.54sec in winning the women’s 50m butterfly final, with home swimmer Gina Bottcher, an S4 athlete, taking silver in 50.30 and bronze going to Spain’s S10 swimmer Isabel Santos in 30.55.

The concluding event, the men’s 50m butterfly final, was won by China’s S5 swimmer Weiyi Yuan in 31.87.

Silver went to home double world record-breaker Josia Topf, in the S3 category, who clocked 53.71, and bronze to the Czech Republic’s S4 swimmer Arnost Petracek, who finished in 42.05.

Para swimmers are divided into 10 classes based on degree of functional disability from S1, the most severely affected, to S10, and a formula is used to produce a points score from the correlation of time and disability.