China’s Sun Yang, at only 19 years old, has chased down one of the few World Records that survived the polyurethane era, and broke Grant Hackett’s World Record in the men’s 1500 free in 14:34.14.
Even as late as 1300m into this race, the record seemed to be clearly out of reach, but in an excellent call, Speed Endurance’s Tom Willdridge pointed out that Grant Hackett didn’t finish his World Record swim of 14:34.46 all that hard, so that it wasn’t quite out of reach yet.
That clairvoyant call ended up being spot on, as Sun Yang Finished in a closing 100 meters of 54.2 seconds to clear the old mark that had stood since the 2001 World Championships in Fukuoka, Japan.
The 6’6 Sun Yang is a giant of Chinese swimming, literally and figuratively, and he was clearly not laboring as hard as much of his competition throughout most of this race. But he labored just fine on his final 50, and took the all-time mark in a spectacular time. This is only the 2nd World Record broken after the polyurethane era, though obviously in 2001 Hackett did his swim in a textile suit as well. Hackett’s former mark was the oldest World Record on the books: men’s or women’s, short course or long.
The question now is what can he do from here on out? Hackett peaked, in terms of time, at a very young age – he was only 21 when he set this record – so Yang will try to avoid that and take this swim even lower. The comparison is not necessarily invalid, as Yang does most of his training with Denis Cotterel in the Gold Coast, Australia, who was also Grant Hackett’s coach for most of his career.
Smells like an East German woman from the late-70s, early 80s. Wake up.
As his coach I would have been equally elated and irritated. The WR is awesome, but I would have shown him the top watch with his last 50 split, poked him in the side of the head and told him he better be under 14:30 by 2012.
Don’t mean to be that guy either, but with the WR money, some dental work is in order. If he is going to reel in the endorsement Yuan, he is going to have to get that grill straightened out.
for cereals this guy uses rocket fuel instead milk!
25.94 last 50…. mind blowing.Stupid.Absurd.Awesome…. damn.
Interesting to see how the Chinese media report Sun`s record with excitement (english and chinese)- http://www.thinkingchinese.com/index.php?page_id=335
That last 50 is INSANE.
Get this:
Sun Yang’s last 50 is faster by A FULL SECOND than Lochte’s last 50 in winning the 200.
It is also faster than the last 50 of front-half 100 swimmers, for example: it is faster than Stefan Nytrand’s second 50 by a quarter of second!
Sick, just sick. Most amazing is that he could actually drop some seconds to this time.
That was CRAZY. Hackett used to six-beat kick through the whole race. Sun Yang does this two-beat crossover kick and only turned on the burners in the last 100. He just kept this metronomic pace the whole way, and it didn’t even look like he was tired after. Unreal.