SYDNEY (AFP) - Australia's Libby Trickett became the world's fastest woman in the pool with a world record in the 50-metres freestyle on the final night of the national Olympic trials here Saturday.

Trickett, formerly Lenton, powered home to nab the record in the one-lap skelter following teammate Eamon Sullivan's record-shattering feats in the men's equivalent event this week.

Trickett clocked 23.97 seconds to carve 0.12secs off the five-day-old mark held by Dutchwoman Marleen Veldhuis at the European championships in Eindhoven.

It was more than half a second off Trickett's best time in the 50m to finish the trials on a high.

"To be honest I really thought the 50 world record was going to be out of my reach for a lot longer," the 23-year-old said.

"It has always been a bit of a target and it has always seemed such a distant time that I never really thought I could get there."

Trickett beat home rising young sprint star Cate Campbell, 15, who was expected to be the one hunting down Veldhuis's record on Saturday rather than Trickett.

In the men's, team captain Grant Hackett claimed his signature 1500m freestyle event winning the national title in a time of 14 minutes 48.65 seconds ahead of Craig Stevens (14:53.18).

Hackett's quest for three Olympic 1500m titles in Beijing is taking shape after posting his fastest time in three years.

It was Hackett's fastest time since winning the world title in 2005 and having shoulder surgery in 2006 which prevented him competing at the Melbourne Commonwealth Games.

His time was faster than the effort of Russian Yury Prilukov (14:50.40) in winning the European championship just last week.

However, Hackett was still 14 seconds off his world record time swum at the 2001 world championships in Japan and his time was slower than both his previous Olympic victories.

"There was not too much plan tonight, to be honest," Hackett said.

"I did not feel great in the warm-up. But I held the pace up well considering how I felt and it is a solid time."

Hackett won gold in the distance event at the Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004 Games and if he is successful in China he would become the first man to win three successive Olympic titles in the same event.

"That's the first step out of the way with qualifying," he said. "Now I'm really looking forward to putting my head down and doing some hard training.

"It would be great to win a third title.

"I would love to win it for Australia because we've had such a great representation in this event."

It was one of the fastest national trials ever held in Australia with a total of eight world records, a further 13 Commonwealth records and another four Australian records established over the eight days.