On the evening of October 19, the 2024 FINA Short Course World Cup Shanghai Station ended the second day of competition at the Oriental Sports Center. In the eye-catching men's 100m freestyle final, the event's long-course Olympic champion, world record holder and China's Pan Zhanle swam 46.35 seconds, losing to Italy's Chekong by a narrow margin of 0.03 seconds, and unfortunately resigned to second place.
In the men's 100-meter freestyle preliminaries in the morning of the same day, Pan Zhanle swam a time of 46.95 seconds, ranking second in the group and third in the overall score to advance to the final. This timing is not as fast as his time in the long course competition, and for his repeated 47 seconds in the standard pool and 46.40 seconds in the Paris Olympics, it shows that Pan Zhanle did not do his best at all and had great reservations. In the evening final, Pan Zhanle still swam at a more normal level, but failed to win the title, a significant gap from the short course world record of 44.84 seconds held by Australia's Chalmers, and 0.58 seconds short of his own Asian record in the event.
On the first day of the short course competition, Pan Zhanle participated in the men's 100-meter individual medley, which is a unique event in the short course competition, and the swimming style is changed every 25 meters. Poon also participated in this competition to test and show his technical versatility, after all, this is his first official competition since the Paris Olympics. In the end, he won the right to the final and finished sixth, the gold medal was won by Marchand, the gold medalist in the men's 200m individual medley at the Paris Olympics, and Wang Shun finished fourth with a breaking Asian record. Poon was satisfied with his performance in the medley competition, saying: "It is very meaningful for me to swim with Brother Shun in this event, and I will always learn from him. ”
Poon has not had much experience in the 25m short course, and his results in the previous two limited international competitions have not been outstanding. At the end of 2021, he represented the Chinese team for the first time at the World Short Course Championships in Dubai, U.A.E., where he registered for the relay race and finished fifth in the men's three freestyle relay finals.
At the 2022 World Short Course Championships in Melbourne, Australia, Pan Zhanle had already shown his edge and potential, qualified for the men's 100m freestyle to represent the national team, and swam to the final, setting a new Asian record with a time of 45.77 seconds, but it was not competitive enough in the world and only finished sixth. In addition, he finished 6th and 7th in two other relay events at the World Championships.
In 2023, there will be no short course World Championships, only three sub-stations of the World Cup will be set up, which will also be held in mid-October, and the Chinese swimming team will only send Zhang Yufei, Qin Haiyang and Dong Zhihao, who are better at this course, to participate, and Pan Zhanle, who opened the 47-second mark in the standard pool for the first time and won the men's 100-meter freestyle championship at the Hangzhou Asian Games, did not get the opportunity to participate.
Short course swimming places higher demands on the skill level and physical strength of the athletes. Due to the high number of turns, athletes need to quickly adjust their breathing and movement rhythm before and after each turn, which requires a high level of technical proficiency and physical control. In contrast, long-course swimming, while also testing the skill and physical strength of the athlete, allows the athlete to focus more on speed and endurance with fewer turns. The training requirements of the two types of competitions are not the same, compared to the 50-metre standard pool, the short course competition is not the mainstream, and Poon does not focus on the training of the special short course event. The National Swimming Championships held in Wuhan at the end of September was the short course competition, and the first-line main team members such as Zhang Yufei and Qin Haiyang only compared individual events, or abandoned the competition after swimming to the finals, while Pan Zhanle gave up the registration.
After winning two gold medals in the Paris Olympics, Pan Zhanle quickly became a new idol in Chinese swimming and a leader in Chinese men's swimming. After returning to China, Pan Zhanle participated in some essential social activities with several championship teammates, and did not resume systematic training for a period of time. Of course, Pan Zhanle also gets a certain amount of rest time and personal space.
For Pan Zhanle, achieving good results at next year's World Championships in Singapore is the first goal in the near future, and the next short course races in Incheon, Singapore and Budapest short course World Championships are not important performance indicators.
Text/Beiqing Sports Liu Ailin