On December 10, the 2023 National Swimming Championships was staged at the Jinan Olympic Sports Center, and in the preliminaries of the women's 200-meter individual medley event, Tang Qianting, the champion of the Hangzhou Asian Games and a 19-year-old teenager, successfully advanced to the final.
At the World Championships in Fukuoka in July this year, Tang Qianting began to show strong progress, she broke her own Asian record in the women's 50m breaststroke heats, setting a new Asian record of 30.08 seconds. In the women's 50m breaststroke preliminaries at the Hangzhou Asian Games in September this year, she was in excellent form, swimming a time of 29.92 seconds, breaking her own Asian record. In this event, Tang Qianting can be described as a standout in Asia, she has reached the final of this event in two consecutive World Championships, and has broken Asian records many times. Luo Xuejuan, the champion of the Athens Olympics and the Chinese female frog king, once said that in Tang Qianting's body, she saw her former shadow. Luo Xuejuan believes that as long as she is willing to train hard and participate in international competitions to gain experience, she will have a chance to compete for the gold medal at the Paris Olympics.
Tang Qianting was born in Shanghai in 2004 and began to learn Xi swimming at the age of 5. In the water, she felt a different kind of happiness, found the direction of her efforts, and made her heart more resolute. Enlightenment coach Zhang Qiong once commented on Tang Qianting: "Tang Qianting was quite tall when she was a child, and her quality is good in all aspects, the most important thing is that she can endure hardships, has good psychological quality, and can overcome any difficulties by herself, which is not easy." Tang Qianting also said in social ** before: "There may be regrets in life, but regrets are often not the focus of life, what we have to do is to look forward, and the future is always bright." ”
In 2015, Tang Qianting entered the first team of the Shanghai swimming team. In the National Junior Swimming Championships in February of the same year, she won the championship in 7 events, including the women's 50-meter breaststroke, 100-meter breaststroke, breaststroke all-around, 50-meter freestyle, 100-meter freestyle, women's 4 50-meter freestyle relay, and 4 50-meter medley relay.
Tang Qianting's swimming performance can be described as a "surprise" growth. In 2019, Tang Qianting's best time in the women's 100m breaststroke was 1:08.66, ranking only 101st in the world, and she showed no signs of making a leap forward until the national championships in September 2020, when her preliminaries time was 1:08.67, 0.0. slower than in 201901 seconds.
Tang Qianting's real outbreak was around New Year's Day 2021, in the first leg of the battle for supremacy in Shijiazhuang, she swam a good time of 1:06.40 in the preliminaries, and only used 1:06.87 in the final. In the second stop of the Chinese Swimming Championships in Zhaoqing, Guangdong, Tang Qianting swam 1:06.48 in the preliminaries, and improved to 1:06.39 in the final. Referring to the final level of the 2019 World Championships, it can be said that Tang Qianting has soared from a player ranked outside the top 100 to the "top four in the world". Tang Qianting's time of 1:06.39 was higher than the 1:06.40 of fourth place Reiki Aoki (Japan) and slightly lower than the 1:06.36 of third place Carraro (Italy).
With the continuous good results in various competitions across the country, Tang Qianting was selected for the national swimming team in October 2020, under the tutelage of Coach Zheng Shan, and trained with Yan Zibei, which benefited Tang Qianting a lot. Now, Tang has broken the Asian record in the women's 50m breaststroke and swam 30 seconds, a sign of her promotion to the world's top swimmer.
As 2023 draws to a close, the 2023 National Aquatics Championships, which will be held in Jinan from December 10 to 15, will also be an important warm-up event for the 2024 World Aquatics Championships in Doha and the Paris Olympics. As Asia's new female frog king, Tang Qianting will create what kind of impressive results in this championship, let's wait and see.
Reporter: Li Qingbin Editor: Lv Bing Proofreader: Gao Xin