Zhang fires Olympic warning as China narrowly miss world record

World champion swimmer Zhang Yufei sent a major message to her Paris 2024 rivals on Wednesday. Hosts China lead the medals table with 76 golds, far ahead of South Korea (19) and Japan (15), after adding titles in a range of sports from artistic gymnastics and chess to beach volleyball and swimming.
The home nation and Zhang in particular have been in ominous form in the pool in Hangzhou, with the Paris Olympics coming up fast, just 10 months away. The 25-year-old Zhang blasted the fastest time of the year to easily win the 100m butterfly gold, then helped China to come within a whisker of shattering the 4x100m mixed medley relay world record.
Zhang, who has already claimed the 200m fly crown in Hangzhou to go with her Olympic gold, surged to the wall in a new Games-record 55.86sec. That beat the 56.12 that earned her the world title in July, but she wasn’t happy. “It doesn’t feel so good. This wasn’t the record I wanted, I wanted the world record,” she said. “I was aiming for it because even if I couldn’t break it, I wanted to come close.”
Swedish great Sarah Sjostrom has held the world mark of 55.48 since the 2016 Rio Olympics. Zhang suited up again for the relay, part of a powerhouse team featuring triple breaststroke world champion Qin Haiyang, backstroker Xu Jiayu and freestyler Yang Junxuan. They clocked 3:37.73 – the second fastest of all-time behind Britain’s 3:37.58, set at the Tokyo Olympics two years ago.
China took home gold in four of the seven finals on the evening, with Japan (two) and South Korea (one) winning the others.
Beckham and Ronaldo
grace Asian Games
David Beckham made his Asian Games debut on Wednesday in the same team as Ronaldo but not, sadly, in the football tournament. David Beckham Elkatohchoongo and Ronaldo Laitonjam Singh are both track cyclists for India. And they did bend it like Beckham as they sped round the steeply banked curves of the Chun’an Jieshou Sports Centre Velodrome. Ronaldo had made his Games debut on Tuesday, helping India to fifth place in team sprint qualification.
Beckham placed ninth in Wednesday’s individual sprint qualifying, four places higher than Ronaldo. “My father was a footballer in the national team, and he was a huge fan of David Beckham,” Elkatohchoongo explained. “When I was born in the hospital, they told my mum: if it’s a boy, then it’s David Beckham.”
One might think with a name like that he might have turned to football rather than cycling. “I played football when I was young, 14 years old,” he said. “I switched to cycling in 2017, and I started my professional cycling (career) in Delhi five years ago, and now I’m in the professional league properly.”
Laitonjam’s father was similarly a massive fan of the former Barcelona and Brazil wizard Ronaldinho. Posted in Kashmir for work, he had a wager with some friends on Ronaldinho to score against England in the quarter-final of the 2002 World Cup.
Ronaldinho obliged with the winner in a 2-1 victory and Brazil went on to lift the trophy. Seconds after the game, the phone rang and he discovered his wife had gone into labour in their home town of Imphal almost 2,000 kilometres (1,200 miles) away.
“Just as the ball went in the goal, I must have started making an appearance,” Laitonjam said. “I think my dad won some money that day. That’s probably why I got that name. He felt I was very lucky for him.”