The 2009 World Cup was staged at five venues on three continents, with each meet following a morning heats and evening finals format for all events, with the exception of the 800 m and 1500 m freestyle and 400 m individual medley events which were heat-declared winners. The order of events at each meet was the same. A sixth meet originally scheduled to be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on 23–25 October was cancelled.[2]
At each meet of the World Cup circuit in 2009, the FINA Points Table[3] was used to rank all swim performances at the meet. The top 10 men and top 10 women were then awarded World Cup points. Bonus points were awarded for a world record broken (20 points) or equalled (10 points).[4] The number of World Cup points awarded was doubled for the final meet of the World Cup in Singapore.
* Therese Alshammar set a new world record of 58.51 seconds in the heats of this event in Durban.
** Sergey Fesikov set a new world record of 50.95 seconds in the heats of this event in Berlin.