"The eyes of the world are watching Pan Zhanle's men's 100-meter freestyle", this is the title of an article by the famous American swimming website SWIMSWAM. At the 2024 World Swimming Championships in Doha, Pan Zhanle has become a well-deserved C star, with a world record of 46.80 seconds in the men's 100m freestyle, which is almost equivalent to Jamaica's lightning bolt running 9.58 seconds. In the men's 100m freestyle preliminaries and semifinals, he easily won the first place with two consecutive shots, and Reuters predicted that no one in the final could threaten Pan Zhanle, depending on whether he was willing to break the world record again.
After setting a world record in the first stroke of the men's 4x100m freestyle relay, Pan Zhanle became the focus of attention of European and American media in one fell swoop, but then the poor performance of the men's 200m freestyle preliminaries ranked 38th at the bottom of the group, which made people full of suspicion, and even prejudiced European and American netizens said something unpleasant.
Back to the main event of the 100-meter freestyle, Pan Zhanle returned after "playing dead" in the sub-event, and did not exert his strength in the first half of the preliminaries, still winning the first place in the overall ranking in 47.82 seconds; As Reuters put it: "With defending champion Kyle Chalmers of Australia absent from the competition, as are last year's medallists Jack Alexey and Maxim Grushset, Poon will sit in a box to claim his first individual world title." ”
Let's take a look at Pan's opponents in the final, only Italy's Miresi, who finished second in the semi-finals, and South Korea's Hwang Xuanyou, the world champion in the 200m freestyle, are somewhat competitive. Mirexi basically tried his best in the preliminaries and semifinals, and there was no room for improvement, while Huang Xuanyou was stronger than Pan Zhanle in the 200-meter freestyle, but he specialized in the arts, and he was a grade worse in the 100-meter freestyle.
Pan Zhanle couldn't find an opponent in the final, the only opponent was the world record he had just set, and since he had already won a record-breaking bonus of $30,000, he might as well take it again. With Pan Zhanle's hot physical state now, it's a pity not to break the record. If Pan Zhanle tries his best to break the world record, there is a high probability that he will break it, but he said in an interview: "I hope to stay in the Paris Olympics and break the world record again"......
At the 2022 World Championships and the 2023 World Championships, Pan Zhanle was unlucky, finishing fourth and missing out on the men's 100m freestyle medal. To provide a small detail, the reporter of the last World Championships asked Pan Zhanle to talk about the harvest of the competition, and Pan Zhanle responded domineeringly: "I haven't won a medal, what can I gain?" Before becoming famous, Pan Zhanle firmly believed that he would become the world's No. 1 flying fish, his talent, his aura, and his willpower are all standard swimming superstars!