2024 PARIS SUMMER OLYMPIC GAMES
- Pool Swimming: July 27 – August 4, 2024
- Open Water Swimming: August 8 – 9, 2024
- La Défense Arena — Paris, France
- LCM (50 meters)
- Meet Central
- Full Swimming Schedule
- SwimSwam Preview Index
- Pick ’em Contest
- How To Watch
- Entry Lists
- Live Results
- Prelims Live Recaps: Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 | Day 8
- Finals Live Recaps: Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6| Day 7 | Day 8 | Day 9
The entire La Défense Arena was blown away by two groundbreaking performances at the hands of 19-year-old Pan Zhanle of China.
First, in the individual men’s 100m freestyle final, Pan scorched a time of 46.40 to once again become the fastest man in history.
He beat a world-class field that contained the likes of Kyle Chalmers of Australia and David Popovici of Romania by a body length en route to establishing a new World Record.
His gold medal-worthy result hacked .40 off the 46.80 mark he logged as lead-off on his nation’s relay at this year’s World Championships.
That outing would have been enough to call Paris a successful Olympics for the teen but Pan had other plans.
As the anchor on China’s men’s 4x100m medley relay on the final night of action, Pan lit the pool on fire with an anchor of 45.92.
That surpassed the previous all-time split of 46.06 that Jason Lezak of the U.S. swam at the 2008 Beijing Olympics to propel the US to gold in the men’s 4×100 freestyle relay.
Not only did the Chinese men’s medley relay win gold, but in doing so they toppled the U.S. who had topped the podium in the event at every Olympic since 1984.
Speaking to the media after that mind-bending relay, Pan said, “Today, my greatest achievement was still thanks to my teammates. I just did what I was supposed to do.
“I went 46.50 in the individual event. It’s not like I went from 47 seconds in the individual to 46.0 or 46.1 in the relay, so I wouldn’t say it’s shocking, it’s just a normal performance.
“Moving forward, I’m going to settle down and then go for more breakthroughs.”
Reflecting on his individual 100m free gold, Pan stated, “This just means I’ve reached a good level. To be honest, I almost didn’t want to believe it when I went 46.40. I thought there was a problem with the scoreboard.
“Not to mention, people were criticizing me so much. But today, I finally proved myself. This is really a time I am capable of getting.”
You can read more about the criticisms as well as comments from competitors coming to Pan’s defense here.
ATE IN THE INTERVIEW YET AGAIN, PAN ZHANLE! pic.twitter.com/HL4kuKuyXH
— em (@jidantamago) August 5, 2024
Just because I was curious, here’s a roughly exhaustive list of swimmers who he’s friends with on Instagram (they follow each other), grouped by region. He only follows like 100 accounts so it wasn’t very hard to go through it.
USA – Kate Douglass, Nathan Adrian, Hunter Armstrong, Bobby Finke, Matt King, Ryan Murphy
Australia – Kyle Chalmers, Cameron McEvoy, Elijah Winnington, William Yang, Brett Hawke
Europe – Gregorio Paltrinieri, Matt Richards, Maxime Grousset, Alessandro Miresssi, Nandor Nemeth, Diogo Ribeiro, Miguel Nascimiento
Asia – Daiya Seto, Katsuhiro Matsumoto, Kim Woomin, Hwang Sunwoo
South America – Cesar Cielo, Nicholas Santos
If he retired today, that WR will last 20 years.
That’s how good it is
It’s so far ahead of it’s time
It was sad to me to see him use such a momentous moment to express his paranoia and hurt feelings about perceived slights from other swimmers. Of course there are going to be concerns in this WORLD sport about fairness when there have been multiple drug/doping debacles with Chinese swimmers, I suppose that is really hard to deal with, but wow, seems like a young child. Love the blazing speed though!
Agree. Pan should be more subtle in dealing with this kind of daily odds (or minor offences).
The contrast in the way seeing the world between the young people in China and in the West, as well as in the value being upheld is hard to be explained / sorted out in a few words. We know it well, for we Hongkonger just growing up in a place where the East meets West.
Perhaps some readers on here are too young to remember the massive state sponsored doping of past decades…East Germany, Russia (including 2014 winter Olympics), oh, and China (with numerous Olympics medals withdrawn). In common – authoritarian regimes where sport is both revered and a way out. Plus ca change. So when people are cynical it’s understandable.
Transparency is the only solution…and lets face it… the regime in China is not one for “transparency” is it? I would love to celebrate world records without doubting their legitimacy.
Well I doubt the legitimacy of every world record until the athlete is found to be doping at the time of doing the world record. might just be me though.
If a hypothesis cannot be proved wrong, it’s not science
China doped when they hired swim coaches from East Germany. Im not saying they didn’t dope, but it was under the direction of the East German coaches, the Chinese coaches were inexperienced. Maybe China should switch their doping methodology to “legal” doping like western countries.
ok, the whole world konw usa’s doping with licence is “legal”, is it shameful?
Join the TUE club of handicapped
Fantastic
I heard he is enrolling at Texas. Hook’em!
Actually he also said that before the Olympics he can swim a 46:50 in training. And it was glad for him to just break the WR to JUST 46:80 earlier, because then others will think this time is his best. So he can easily get the Olympic champion by swimming a 46:50 or less.
Now we know the results. Actually no one can even get 46:80 except him so his worry is meaningless.
He is only the current world and olympic champion with world record speed at 20 years old.