World record holder Sun Yang served notice this week to his competitors around the globe that he is fit and focused on winning multiple gold medals at the London Games. At China's Swimming Nationals, he made a clean sweep of the four freestyle events he entered at distances ranging from 200 meters to 1500 meters.
In his last individual race on Saturday, he clocked a 2012 world best in the 1500-meter freestyle at 14:42.30. The time easily surpassed the previous world best of the year set by South Korean rival, Park Tae-hwan. Although Sun was several seconds off his world-record time of 14:34.14, he appears on track for Olympic greatness this summer.
Sun said after his latest win: "I can't break the record every time. It's beyond imagination. I think the result today is good and I'm happy with it. I hope I can have a perfect performance at the London Games."
Earlier in the meet, Sun took the 200-meter freestyle in 1:46.05, won the 400 meters in the same stroke with a 3:42.31 clocking, and cruised to a victory in the 800 meters at 7:47.11. (The 800-meter freestyle is not a men's Olympic swimming event.)
A surprise occurred in the men's 400-meter freestyle as Zhang Lin, the Beijing Olympics silver medalist in the event, failed to qualify for London after finishing fourth in the event and outside of the Olympic qualifying standard.
Zhang commented afterwards: "I trained well and prepared well, and I don't know why the result is so poor."
Another newsworthy item from China this week was the failure of Zhao Jing to qualify for the London Games. She was the 2011 world champion in the 100-meter backstroke, but has not come close to the Olympic qualifying swims needed in either the 100 meter or 200 meter backstrokes.
However, a Chinese Swimming Association official later stated the body's official policy on Olympic selection: "We will not take this meet as the final word for selection. It is just a part of a series of selection criteria that is part of a comprehensive assessment program."
