Magnussen causes swimming rivals headaches A bad headache ensured a "sloppy" 100m freestyle semi-final effort by world champion James Magnussen at the national swimming championships in Adelaide on Monday. But he would have no doubt created some headaches for rivals ahead of July's world titles after backing up from a scorching heat time to qualify fastest for Tuesday night's 100m final. Magnussen took a confident step toward post-London redemption by topping the 100m semi-final time sheets, clocking 48.24 seconds ahead of fellow controversial Olympic relay teammates Cameron McEvoy (48.63), Matt Targett (48.68) and James Roberts (48.83). Magnussen sounded far from happy with his semi-final effort but had sounded his intentions by swimming the second-fastest 100m freestyle time of the year on Monday morning (47.97). I had a pretty chronic headache this arvo. It was hanging around. I knew I was going to be a bit sloppy (in the semis)," Magnussen said. But I am doing a lot of work on staying positive, staying in the right frame of mind. That was a good test of that tonight. I think that got me across the line tonight. I didn't quite have the spark tonight. But that won't be a problem tomorrow night. Meanwhile, Olympic silver medallist Christian Sprenger set a national record (26.90) to win the 50m breaststroke title in the year's fastest time, a full second ahead of runner-up Max Ireland (27.90) Olympic bronze medallist Bronte Barratt (one minute, 56.05 seconds) claimed her second straight 200m freestyle title and fourth overall by holding out London teammate Kylie Palmer (1:56.66) to book a flight to Barcelona. Grant Irvine (1:55.32) is also bound for Spain after clocking the fastest 200m butterfly time of the year to win the final ahead of favourite Chris Wright (1:57.79). It almost made up for Irvine missing out on London Olympic selection by just 0.27 of a second at last year's national titles. Irvine, 22, said he would never forget his narrow qualifying miss at last year's national titles - but coach Michael Bohl still reminded him anyway. "Every second day at training he would remind me so I worked that little bit harder," Irvine said. It was hard to get back (after missing out on London). But it was a motivating thing for me. It worked today anyway. Jarrod Poort (8:06.71) claimed 800m freestyle gold ahead of fellow 18-year-old Jack McLoughlin (8:12.53). In other results, Alicia Coutts was fastest qualifier (28.12) for the 50m backstroke final ahead of Emily Seebohm (28.14), defending champion Daniel Tranter (1:59.06) was fastest for the men's 200m individual medley final and Samantha Hamill (2:10.64) was quickest in the women's 200m butterfly semis.