2023 Asian Games: Pan Zhanle’s 47.06 Opener Rockets China To 4×100 Free Relay Record

19TH ASIAN GAMES

• Sunday, September 24th – Friday, September 29th (swimming)
• Hangzhou Olympic Sports Centre Aquatic Sports Arena, Hangzhou, China
• LCM (50m)
• Meet Central
• Entries
• Results
• Day 2 Finals Live Recap
• Day 3 Finals Live Recap
• Day 4 Finals Live Recap
• Day 5 Finals Live Recap

Yet another Asian Record bit the dust at the 2023 Asian Games, this time in the men’s 4x100m freestyle relay.

Competing during the penultimate finals session of this 6-day competition, the combination of Pan Zhanle, Chen Juner, Hong Jinquan, and Wang Haoyu combined to produce a winning effort of 3:10.88. In doing so, the foursome knocked half a second off of the previous Chinese national and Asian continental record of 3:11.38 notched at this year’s World Championships.

Behind China this evening was the nation of Korea, with the quartet of Ji Yuchan (48.90), Lee Hojoon (47.79), Kim Jihun (48.66) and Hwang Sunwoo (47.61) hitting a new national record of their own in 3:12.96.

Japan also landed on the podium in a time of 3:14.26, with their fastest split coming in at 47.97 from Katsumi Nakamura on the 3rd leg.

As for China, the nation stuck to the same lineup as when they finished 4th in this relay event in Fukuoka, save for the 3rd leg. Wang Changhao was replaced with Hong Jinquan this time around, with the latter knocking over half a second off of the former’s Worlds split.

Comparing other splits, anchor Wang Haoyu was over half a second slower than he was in Fukuoka, although lead-off speedster Pan was over half a second faster here in Hangzhou. Pan fired off a 47.06 opener (22.52/24.54) to rocket China ahead of the field here, following up on his monster 46.97 individual 100m free gold medal-winning performance from earlier at these Games.

China’s performance here now frog-hops Great Britain and Hungary to become the 8th-fastest performing nation in history in this men’s 4x100m free relay event.