WORLD champion and Wrexham fan Laura Stephens has successfully made it through her heat at the Paris Olympic Games.

Stephens, the women's 200m butterfly world champion, qualified for the semi-finals after finishing fourth in her heat on Wednesday morning.

Her time of 2-10.46 saw her placed 14th of the qualifiers for the semi-finals, which are set to take place on Wednesday evening.

Fellow Team GB swimmer Keanna Macinnes won that heat 2-08.46 and she qualified seventh quickest.

The fastest qualifier was China's Yufei Zhang in a time of 2-06.55.

Stephens made her Olympic debut at Tokyo 2020, where she finished sixth in her semi-final and missed out on a spot in the final by a second.

It has been some year already for Stephens, who claimed a brilliant gold medal at the FINA World Swimming Championships in Doha in February.

Then, in April, she was at the STōK Cae Ras to see Wrexham clinch promotion to League One with a thumping 6-0 triumph over Forest Green Rovers.

During an unbelievable spell, three days after that win at a rocking Racecourse, it was announced that Laura had been selected to compete for Great Britain at the summer Olympics in Paris.

Stephens told Swim England: “It’s my second games now and I had a bit of a disappointment in Tokyo when I missed out on the final.

“So I’m hoping to rectify that at this games and I’d really like to be in the final and in the chase for one of those medals.

“I feel like I’m a lot more experienced coming into Paris. I know kind of what I’ve got facing me."