Swimmer Yu Yiting competes in Chinese National Swimming Championships (25 meters) in Beijing on October 28, 2022. Yu breaks the national record of women's 100-meter medley. Photo: Cui Fandi/GT

 
The Chinese National Swimming Championships (25 meters) officially ended on Sunday night, after Chinese swimmers gradually refreshed themselves from a disappointing international championships, breaking more than 10 records in three days, including one world record.

Li Bingjie was undoubtedly the best performer at the event. In the women's 400-meter freestyle race on Thursday, beat the previous world record in the short-course competition. In the 1,500-meter freestyle event, she once again rewrote the Asian record, in addition to breaking the 200-meter freestyle national record. She also competed in the 800-meter freestyle and 100-meter freestyle, where she was placed first and third respectively.

Li, who achieved excellent results from short distance to long distance, said after the race that she was very satisfied with her performance. However, she also mentioned that she did not achieve what she had expected in some events.

"The continuous competitions made me a little tired, which also shows that my training ability is are not enough. I also found some flaws in the competition, which will be solved and perfected in my future training," she told reporters in the mix zone after finishing a race.

Li's outstanding performance did not completely overshadow the other Chinese swimmers, both younger and more mature ones also showed excellent form in the event. In addition to a world record, Team China also broke three Asian records and eight national records.

Tang Qianting, 18, was another notable newcomer in the competition. Her time of 29:43 in the women's 50-meter breaststroke preliminaries surpassed the Asian record of 29:57 set by Japan's Reisu Aoki in 2020, and again set the Asian record with 29:19 in the final. She also rewrote the Asian record in the women's 100-meter breaststroke.

"It feels very good to set the Asian record twice in one day. I hope I can continue to improve myself at the Melbourne Short Course World Championships." Tang told reporters.

Yang Junxuan, 20, was the only gold medalist for the Chinese swimming team at the 19th FINA World Championships Budapest 2022 in June and July. She also carried her momentum into the National Championships, achieving two national records in one day in the women's 100-meter freestyle, beating the previous time of 52:04 by clocking  in at 51:78.

"I'm not yet back to my best form yet. The race exposed a lot of my problems and I still have a lot of room for improvement," she said.

Two-time Olympic gold medalist and "butterfly queen" Zhang Yufei also performed well in this competition. In the 50-meter freestyle, she swam 23 seconds 82 to break the national record. And in the 100-meter butterfly, Zhang recorded 55.46 seconds, which was only 0.21 seconds behind the Asian record.

The Olympic champion in the 200-meter butterfly said she hopes to focus her recent preparation on the short-distance events of 50 and 100 meters. She said she has recovered 90 percent of her form in the short-distance events. "I hope to win an Olympic title in the 100-meter event, which would be a breakthrough for myself as well as a historic breakthrough for Chinese swimming."

Compared with the Chinese female swimmers who set new records time and again and sparked cheers in the crowd, the strength of the men's event was slightly outshone. However, Fei Liwei won the men's 800-meter freestyle with a national record-breaking 7 minutes and 37.74 seconds. Qin Haiyang also reset the national records in the men's 100-meter breaststroke with a time of 56.31 seconds and the men's 50-meter breaststroke with 26.12 seconds, while Chen Jun'er broke the national record in the men's 200-meter butterfly.