Teen World Champion Hwang Sunwoo In Action Later This Month

2022 KOREAN SWIMMING TRIALS

• Thursday, March 24th – Monday, March 28th
• Gimcheon Indoor Swimming Pool, Gimcheon, South Korea
• LCM (50m)
• Selection Meet for 2022 World Championships, World University Games, Asian Games
• Results

The nation of South Korea will soon be hosting its elite selection meet for the summer’s competitions of the World Championships, World University Games and Asian Games.

Here is a quick reminder of the dates and locations of these major meets:

• June 18th – July 3rd – 2022 FINA World Aquatic Championships, Budapest, Hungary
• June 26th – July 7th – World University Games, Sichuan, China
• September 10th – September 25th – Asian Games, Hangzhou, China

Among the top competitors vying for roster spots is young gun Hwang Sunwoo, the breakout star who made two Olympic finals in his Games debut last year in Tokyo.

Still 18, with his birthday coming up in May, Hwang has proven to be a formidable force on the freestyle scene, wrecking Olympic champion Park Tae Hwan‘s records along the way.

Hwang clocked a new Asian Record of 47.56 in the men’s 100m freestyle during the Tokyo semi-final while he also nabbed a new 200m free national record with his 1:44.62 heats swim.

Hwang ultimately placed 5th in the 100m (47.82) and 7th in the 20om (1:45.26); however, the man went on to take the World Short Course Championships title in men’s 200m free fewer than 6 months later in Abu Dhabi.

That’s the kind of momentum one likes to take into an inserted World Championships, with Budapest arriving on the schedule after the originally scheduled 2022 Worlds in Fukuoka, Japan were postponed to next year.

Hwang is taking on his bread-and-butter 100m and 200m free events, as well as the 50m free for these Trials. He is opting out of the 200m IM, an event in which he swam for the first time last year and wound up dropping the national record down to 1:58.04.

Additional key male swimmers to watch at the Korean Trials include Cho Sungjae in the 50m/100m/200m breast, Lee Juho in the 50m/100m/200m back and Moon Jaekwon in the 50m/100m/200m breast.

Cho was the first-ever Korean man to get under the minute threshold in the 100m breast, as he punched a time of 59.65 at last year’s Olympic Trials. The 21-year-old repeated a similar feat in Tokyo, clocking 59.99 to wind up 20th overall in the event.