Chinese swimmer breaks 100m freestyle world record at World Championships

MOSCOW, 11 Feb. Chinese swimmer Pan Zhanle updated the world record in the 100-meter freestyle at the World Aquatics Championships in Doha.
On Sunday, Pan Zhanle competed first as part of the Chinese team in the men's 4×100-meter relay crawl. His result was 46.80 seconds. Before him, the world record belonged to David Popovic (46.86), the Romanian set it in the individual distance at the 2022 European Championships.
The Chinese team became the winner of the relay and won gold medals with a time of 3 minutes 11.08 seconds. The second was the Italian team (3:12.08), the third was the US team (3:12.29).

Pan Zhanle is 19 years old. He is the silver medalist at the 2023 World Championships in the medley relay.

The World Championships will end on February 18. Earlier, the International Aquatics Federation (World Aquatics) published on its official website the criteria for admission of Russians and Belarusians to international competitions, allowing them to perform only in individual disciplines in a neutral status. The President of the All-Russian Swimming Federation, Vladimir Salnikov, later stated that the national aquatics federations had sent a collective letter of disagreement with the admission criteria. On January 17, World Aquatics reported that not a single Russian athlete had applied to participate in the FINA World Championships in Doha.