On the evening of December 18, Beijing time, the 2021 FINA World Short Course Swimming Championships in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates continued, and the Chinese team once again sent a good news - in the women's 800-meter freestyle competition, Olympic champion and 19-year-old Li Bingjie won the championship in 8 minutes 02 seconds and 90 seconds, and broke the record. Congratulations to Li Bingjie!
Li Bingjie was born on March 3, 2002 in Baoding, Hebei Province. At this summer's Tokyo Olympics, she teamed up with teammates Zhang Yufei, Tang Muhan and Yang Junxuan to win the gold medal in the women's 4×200m freestyle relay and break the world record. Li Bingjie took on the heavy responsibility of the last stick.
At the World Championships in short pool swimming, Li Bingjie ranked first in the women's 800m preliminaries, and she was in the fourth lane in the final. From the beginning, Li Bingjie ranked first, leading all the way, and the half-distance result was 4:00.18. In the end, Li Bingjie won the championship with a time of 8:02.90, breaking the record of 8 minutes 03.41 seconds played by Spanish star Belmont in December 2014. The Russian player trailed Li Bingjie by 3.54 seconds and won the silver medal. Italy finished third.
This is Li Bingjie's first gold medal in the Short Course Swimming World Championships, which is also the second gold medal won by the Chinese swimming team at the World Championships. The day before, Zhang Yufei won the gold medal in the women's 200m butterfly with a time of 2:03.01, and the Chinese athlete won the world championship in this event after a gap of 24 years.
In addition, in the evening of the 18th, Hong Kong, China's He Shibei swam 50.98 seconds in the women's 100m freestyle final, breaking the record and winning the championship. China's Peng Xuwei finished fourth in the women's 200m backstroke. In the men's 200m breaststroke final, Qin Haiyang ranked fifth.
In the semifinals of the women's 50m butterfly, Zhang Yufei ranked third to enter the final and is expected to win another gold.