Beijing time on July 5: The 19th FINA World Championships in the early morning of Beijing time on the 4th came to an end in Budapest, the capital of Hungary. After half a month of competition, all gold medals were produced in swimming, diving, synchronized swimming, open water swimming, water polo and other events. The Chinese team won 18 gold, 2 silver and 8 bronze medals with a total of 28 medals, ranking second in the medal table. Among them, the Chinese team won all 13 gold medals produced by diving, the swimming team won 1 gold, and synchronized swimming won four Olympic gold medals and finally realized its dream at the World Championships. As the first international competition in the Paris Olympic cycle, the Chinese team has achieved good results, but there are some problems in various events. Today we will summarize the performance of the Chinese team to look forward to the performance of the Chinese Water Team at the Paris Olympic Games.
Due to the epidemic in Fukuoka, Japan, the original World Championships held this year were postponed for another year, FINA faced the dilemma of not being able to host the World Championships for many years. At this time, Budapest, which hosted the World Championships in 2017, expressed its willingness to host a World Championship, so in February this year, FINA temporarily decided that Budapest would host the 19th FINA World Championships from the end of June to the beginning of July this year. This year's World Championships are different from the past, the first to be carried out is the swimming and synchronized swimming competitions, but the diving projects that were the first to start the competition are carried out later. Despite being a temporary addition to the tournament, the Chinese team sent a full-fledged squad to compete in this year's World Championships.
In the swimming competition that began first, everyone still had high hopes for the Chinese team, especially in the performance of Zhang Yufei, who performed brilliantly at the Tokyo Olympic Games, which was very much expected by everyone. However, the result of the whole competition is that the Chinese swimming team won 1 gold, 4 bronze and 5 medals, which is the worst record since the 2007 World Championships. The only gold medal won by the Chinese team was won by Yang Junxuan in the women's 200m freestyle event, but the gold content of this gold medal is not too high, and Dietmus, He Shibei and Ledecky, who performed brilliantly at the Tokyo Olympic Games, did not participate in the competition, and Yang Junxuan's winning performance was not too high, but this gold medal still had a great incentive for her to have a better performance in the Paris cycle. Zhang Yufei, who was optimistic before the competition, won the bronze medal in all three butterfly events, and she did not complete her dream of winning the World Championships. Although there is news that Zhang Yufei has performed at the best level at present, it is also a good thing for the preparation of the Paris Olympics to expose the problem now. In terms of the men's team, the previous sessions have all had gold medals or medals, the men's team in this competition is grainless, Wang Shun, who won the gold medal at the Tokyo Olympic Games, did not advance to the final in his two medley events, and Xu Jiayu, who won gold medals in the previous two sessions, is not as good as he did not get on the podium before. However, the men's team still had surprises, the young Pan Zhanle won the fourth place in the men's 100m freestyle event, and the semi-final result equaled the national record maintained by Ning Zetao, so that everyone saw hope for the Chinese men's short distance freestyle. However, judging from the performance of the World Championships, the Chinese swimming team has a long way to go if it wants to regain its glory in the Paris Olympic Games.
The Chinese team in the synchronized swimming arena, which started swimming at the same time as swimming, has made a breakthrough, because of the relationship between Russia and Ukraine, Russia has naturally been banned by FINA, and the Chinese team has naturally become the biggest hit in the synchronized swimming event at the World Championships. Unlike the Olympic Games, which had only two gold medals, the Synchronized Swimming Competition at the World Championships featured nine gold medals. The Chinese team participated in the Olympic sports of doubles and team technical self-selection, free self-selection, and the world championships unique mixed doubles technology self-selection and free selection of six events. After the Tokyo Olympics, the Chinese team also achieved a replacement of old and new, but the participating programs are still the same sports as the Tokyo Olympic Games. The Chinese team won four gold medals in the Olympic event with a large advantage, achieving a historic breakthrough, which is the first time that the Chinese synchronized swimming team has won the gold medal in the Olympic event at the World Championships. Although the score is lower than the Chinese team's score at the Tokyo Olympics, it still has a big advantage over other teams. In the mixed doubles event, the Chinese team won two bronze medals and also achieved a historic breakthrough. Although Russia did not participate in the gold medal of the Chinese team, it is also an encouragement for Chinese synchronized swimming. At present, Russia's ban does not know how long it will last, if Russia can not participate in the Paris Olympic Games, the Chinese team can still look forward to winning the gold medal in synchronized swimming at the Paris Olympic Games.
Finally, we focused on the diving project of the final competition, the Chinese team achieved 13 projects to participate in the whole project, and what was more terrifying was that it won gold medals in all 13 events, and also won 2 silver medals and 2 bronze medals. All the participating athletes of the Chinese team, except for Zheng Jiuyuan, who competed in the men's one-meter board competition, won medals. The Chinese team's realization of the big package does reflect our great advantage in diving, but we can also see some problems from it. In the women's event, the Chinese team still has a dominant advantage, and the champion and runner-up of the Tokyo Olympic Games on the jumping platform, Quan Hongchan and Chen Taoxi, participated in the competition, although there was no final performance in the Tokyo Olympic Games, but the advantage of the foreign athletes was huge, and the Paris Olympic Games continued to be expected. The women's springboard has achieved the replacement of old and new, and the gold medalists shi Tingmao and Wang Han of the Tokyo Olympics have retired as coaches. Chen Yiwen and Chang Yani competed for the women's three-meter board, and in the doubles competition, the two won the championship with a large advantage to defend the glory of the Chinese team. However, in the single competition, Chen Yiwen played steadily and won the gold medal, achieving 11 consecutive world championships for the Chinese team, but Chang Yanni made many mistakes and finally won a bronze medal. Chang Yani is Zhou Jihong's favorite Miaozi, who once partnered with Shi Tingmao to win the double gold medal at the World Championships in 2017, but her poor performance was not selected for the Tokyo Olympic team. At present, Chang Yanni's state is not small, and the seat in the Paris Olympics is not stable, and Lin Shan may take her place. In addition, the difficulty of the women's springboard has been stuck for more than 20 years, and there may be difficulty in the Paris cycle to break through Chen Yiwen's reserves of 5154 and 307C, whether it is used in actual combat depends on the opponent's situation.
As for the men's team, Tokyo Olympic champion Wang Zongyuan became the first athlete to win three diving gold medals at the World Championships, and he won gold medals in three springboard events. Wang Zongyuan was able to participate in the Competition for the Olympic Games only after the Tokyo Olympics were postponed for one year, and he also lived up to expectations and seized the opportunity to win a gold and a silver medal in the Olympic Games. If there is no big accident, he will lock in a place for the Paris Olympic Games, and there should be a fierce competition for another place, Cao Yuan and Xie Sibei. At present, the biggest opponent of the Chinese team on the springboard is still The British Jeklauer, as long as we play normally in the Paris Olympics, it is still expected. On the jumping platform, we made up for the regret of Tokyo and won the gold medal in the double event, and the combination of Yang Hao and Lian Junjie was also perfect, and the winning result could still be of course, which had something to do with the fact that the new foreign combination had not taken shape. In the single event veteran Yang Jian chose to stick to his Olympic gold medal dream, he and Yang Hao competed in the single competition as the champion and runner-up of the last World Championships and finally won the gold and bronze medals. However, in the final, both had different degrees of mistakes, Yang Jian's victory was only 515.45 and the Tokyo Olympics victory was more than 70 points, and the second and third place results were even less than 500 points in recent World Series. In this project, we also saw the emergence of some newcomers, Japan's Tamai Road Bucket, Ukraine's Serida and others will be opponents of the Paris cycle to bring great impact, and it is still not easy for the men's ten meter platform to continue its glory.
The World Championships have come to an end, the overall results of the Chinese team are gratifying, but each project has certain problems, as the first competition in the Paris cycle to test the team's current level, it is a good start for preparing for the Paris Olympic Games. We also expect the Chinese Water Corps to train well and perform better in the future.