Li Bingjie crushes 400m freestyle world record

Li Bingjie of China has set a world record in the women’s 400 meter freestyle during the Chinese Swimming Championships.

In three minutes and 51.30 seconds, the 20-year-old athlete broke the previous world record of 3:53.92 set by Australian Ariarne Titmus in 2018. A full TWO seconds faster.

“I was so surprised. I didn’t expect this result at all,” said Li, “It proves that my training in the past two months has paid off and my efforts have not been in vain.”

In June, Li failed to make it to the finals in both the 400m and 1500m freestyle at the World Championships in Budapest, Hungary and finished fifth in the 800 freestyle final.

Li has rediscovered the top form she showed during last year’s Tokyo 2020 Olympics, when she won a bronze in the 400m freestyle.

Other notable results say Olympic champion Zhang Yufei win the women’s 50m freestyle with a time of 23.82 seconds, breaking the national record set by Zhu Menghui in 2018.

“This is the first time I swam into 24 seconds in 50m freestyle, so I’m very delighted,” said Zhang, “But at the same time, I was a little bit dissatisfied because my goal was to break the Asian record, and I was just 0.07 seconds shy of completing the goal.”

Both Zhang and Li are expected to be strong favorites at the upcoming World Championships, which will be held in Melbourne, Australia, in December.