DOHA, Qatar — World records were set on the first day of swimming competition at the World Aquatics Championships on Sunday, despite the absence of many of swimming’s biggest names.
Teenager Pan Zhanle led the Chinese team in the gold medal-winning 4×100 freestyle relay, swimming the fastest 100 meters in history.
His time of 46.80 seconds (split 22.26) shaved six-hundredths off the 2022 world record held by Romania’s David Popovic and is the record the 19-year-old should break in this year’s Paris Olympic swimming competition. Established.
“Actually, I wasn’t feeling too good,” Pan said. “I would have been happy just to get on the podium. In this morning’s heats, America, Great Britain and Italy were all faster than us, so I wanted to focus on doing my job well.”
“I told myself, ‘Just swim as hard as you can.'” I wanted to leave it behind.”
China won the relay with a time of 3 minutes 11.08 seconds. Italy finished second behind, with the United States finishing on the podium with a time of 3:12.29.
Erica Fairweather won the women’s 400m freestyle, becoming New Zealand’s first gold medalist at the World Aquatics Championships.
Fairweather, who won bronze behind Arialne Titmus and Katie Ledecky at last year’s World Aquatics Championships, won in 3:59.44, 2.18 seconds ahead of China’s Li Bingjie.
Germany’s Isabelle Gose took third place, 2.95 behind Fairweather, also breaking the national record.
With the open water, artistic swimming and diving events all wrapped up in Doha, the focus now turns to eight days of racing at Aspire Dome and Pool.
With the Olympics starting in Paris in just over five months, Titmuss and Ledecky are just two of the sport’s biggest names to skip the world championships. This is the first time in history that a long-distance world championship will be held in the same year as the Olympics.
The men’s 400m free final was also without a defending champion, but for a different reason, with Ahmed Hafnaoui losing his heat earlier in the day by two seconds in a surprising result.
Kim Woo-min won with a personal best time of 3:42.71, marking South Korea’s first medal in this event since 2011.
He edged out 2022 champion Elijah Winnington (Australia) by 0.15 and Lukas Mertens (Germany) by 0.25.
In the 4×100 women’s free relay, the Netherlands won the gold medal with a time of 3:36.61, followed by Australia with the silver medal (3:36.93) and Canada with the bronze medal (3:37.95).