At the World Swimming Championships in Fukuoka, China's rising swimming star Qin Haiyan stunned the audience with his extraordinary strength. On Monday evening, he broke the Asian record with an amazing breaststroke leap to win the men's breaststroke title, which is not only the glory of Chinese swimming, but also the first gold medal for our country in this event. Immediately after that, in the men's 50-meter breaststroke preliminaries on Tuesday, he broke the Asian record again with a time of 26:34.
Looking back at last year, the Chinese team suffered a setback in the competition, winning only one gold medal in the individual event. However, Qin Ocean made a comeback in Monday night's competition. In the absence of British Olympic gold medalist Piatti, Qin Ocean became the favorite to win the national championships with his outstanding performance, swimming 57:93. He set Asian records in the preliminaries and semifinals with times of 58:26 and 57:82, respectively, and advanced to the final in first place. In the final, Qin Ocean was in the fourth lane, but led at the halfway point, and eventually set a new Asian record with 57:69, winning China's first gold medal of this World Championships and creating history as the first Chinese to win a world title in the 100-meter breaststroke.
Following Qin Ocean's strong performance, he was at it again in the Men's 50m Breaststroke Preliminaries as teammate Sun Jiajun swam a new Asian record of 26'76 in the first set of races. Qin Ocean followed up with an even better performance, setting a new Asian record again with a time of 26:34 and advancing to the semifinals as the top overall swimmer.
Meanwhile, in the final of the women's 100 meters butterfly, Zhang Yufei won the gold medal with a strong backstroke of 56 seconds 12, which is also her personal first long-pool world championship. Zhang Yufei, who had won the silver medal in the 100m butterfly at the Tokyo Olympics, said after the race: "Our overall performance last year was not ideal, and we put in a lot of effort for this World Championships. We learned a lot and got a lot of opportunities last year, and I hope there will be more gold medals in the books in the coming days."
