Cheng Yujie Leads Yu Yiting In Women’s 100 Free To Kick Off Chinese Spring Championships

2025 CHINESE NATIONAL SPRING SWIMMING CHAMPIONSHIPS

• Tuesday, March 18th – Sunday, March 23rd
• Qingdao, Shandong Province, China
• LCM (50m)
• Results via Asian media

The 2025 Chinese National Spring Swimming Championships kicked off today from Qingdao with over 1,000 athletes expected to compete over the course of the six-day competition.

Although big guns Pan Zhanle, Xu Jiayu and Li Bingjie have opted out of the meet, we’ll have our eyes on the likes of Olympians Sun Yang, Zhang Yufei and Ye Shiwen who are entered in multiple events.

This competition serves as a stepping stone along the way to May’s Chinese Championships, the meet which serves as the primary qualification opportunity for this summer’s World Championships in Singapore. The National Games are also on the horizon, on the agenda for this November.

On day one, Zheng Huiyu led the way in the women’s 200m IM, posting a winning result of 2:12.18 to begin her campaign. 

The teen who just turned 18 in January got the edge over Yu Yiting who snagged silver in 2:12.47. 

While 19-year-old Yu owns a significantly faster personal best of 2:07.75 from when she won gold at the 2023 Asian Games, Zhen’s effort tonight was within striking distance of her PB of 2:11.63 put on the books at the 2024 Chinese Nationals.

Although this competition is not a World Championships qualifier for Chinese swimmers, both women dipped under the World Aquatics ‘A’ cut of 2:12.83 needed for Singapore.

Looking at the season’s top performers in the world, Zhen and Yu now rank 9th and 10th, respectively.

The women’s 100m freestyle also took place tonight with just one competitor dipping under the 54-second barrier en route to getting to the wall first.

19-year-old Olympic relay medalist Cheng Yujie got the job done, hitting a result of 53.91 for the gold. 

That was enough to hold off Yu who doubled up on her 200m IM by registering a new personal best of 54.04 to snag the silver behind Cheng. Entering this competition, Yu’s lifetime best was represented by the 54.10 notched at last year’s Chinese Championships.

As for Cheng, her career-quickest performance remains at the 53.26 nabbed in 2023, a time which rendered her China’s 5th-swiftest swimmer of all time.

Both women now enter the list of top 10 performers worldwide on the season and their times would have been good enough for Singapore.

On the men’s side, a battle took place in the 100m butterfly with the top 3 performers separated by just .22.

24-year-old Sun Jiajun was first to the wall, turning in a time of 52.08, a mark just over half a second off his best-ever 51.52 from last year.

Chen Juner finished a hair behind, hitting 52.26 while Shen Jiahao also landed on the podium in 52.30.

They’ll need to step things up in May, as the World Aquatics ‘A’ standard in the event rests at 51.77 a threshold only Sun and Chen have cleared in their careers.

Finally, Zhang Zhanshuo blasted a new personal best of 14:54.06 in the men’s 1500m free to take the gold.

That’s a new career-fastest result by nearly 10 seconds as the 17-year-old’s previous PB stood at the 15:03.07 notched in 2023. 

The teen’s performance now renders him China’s 4th best performer in history. 

Season-wise, Zhang now sits #2 in the world only behind Olympic champion Florian Wellbrock of Germany and his time of 14:51.91 from last December.