2026 CHINESE NATIONAL SWIMMING CHAMPIONSHIPS
- Tuesday, June 16 – Sunday, June 21, 2026
- Hangzhou, China
- LCM (50 meters)
- Live Results
- Daily Recaps: Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3
Thirteen-year-old Yu Zidi continues to make headlines.
On the fourth night of the 2026 Chinese National Swimming Championships, the 13-year-old phenom threw down a time of 4:30.79 to dominate the women’s 400m IM final, dropping over 2.5 seconds from her former best of 4:33.33 to rank eighth in world history and second in this season’s world rankings.
2025-2026 LCM Women 400 IM
MCINTOSH
4:27.31
| 2 | Yu Zidi | CHN | 4:30.79 | 06/19 |
| 3 | Jenna FORRESTER | AUS | 4:31.47 | 06/13 |
| 4 | Ke Wenxi | CHN | 4:33.59 | 06/19 |
| 5 | Mary-Sophie Harvey | CAN | 4:34.29 | 05/28 |
All-Time Performers, Women’s 400 IM (LCM)
- Summer McIntosh (Canada) – 4:23.65 (swum in 2025 at 18 years old)
- Katinka Hosszu (Hungary) – 4:26.36 (swum in 2016 at 27 years old)
- Kaylee McKeown (Australia) – 4:28.22 (swum in 2024 at 22 years old)
- Ye Shiwen (China) – 4:28.43 (swum in 2012 at 16 years old)
- Stephanie Rice (Australia) – 4:29.45 (swum in 2008 at 20 years old)
- Kirsty Coventry (Zimbabwe) – 4:29.89 (swum in 2008 at 24 years old)
- Li Xuanxu (China) – 4:30.43 (swum in 2009 at 15 years old)
- Yu Zidi (China) – 4:30.79 (swum today at 13 years old)*
When comparing Yu’s swim tonight to her previous PB, she simply took it out much faster and held on through the freestyle leg. She was a second faster on fly, just under two seconds quicker on backstroke, and nearly three-quarters of a second faster on breast, before closing just under a second slower on the final 100.
Splits Comparison
| New PB | Previous PB | |
| Butterfly | 1:00.60 | 1:01.56 |
| Backstroke | 1:08.31 | 1:10.18 |
| Breaststroke | 1:19.15 | 1:19.81 |
| Freestyle | 1:02.73 | 1:01.78 |
| Final Time | 4:30.79 | 4:33.33 |
Earlier in the meet, Yu won the 200m fly (2:06.12) and 400m free (4:05.06) and touched second in the 200m IM (2:09.33). While she’s been as quick as 2:05.71 and 2:07.41 in the 200m fly and 200m IM, respectively, her performance in the 400 free was a major lifetime best. Coming into the competition, Yu owned a personal best time of 4:10.73, set back in 2024 when she was still 11, and she had lowered that to 4:09.79 in the prelims on Thursday.
Yu, who turned 13 in October, had a series of mind-bending swims throughout 2025 while she was 12, including earning a trio of 4th-place finishes at the World Championships in Singapore. She first started making headlines in May at the China National Championships in Shenzhen, where she won the 200m fly (2:06.83) and 400m IM (4:35.53) and placed 2nd in the 200m IM (2:10.63), qualifying her for the World Championships while going well under the existing 11-12 age group records in the United States–for both boys and girls.
Come Worlds, Yu placed 4th in the 200m fly, clocking 2:06.43 to miss the podium by just 32 one-hundredths of a second, while in the 200m IM, her time of 2:09.21 in the final earned her 4th and saw her finish just six one-hundredths shy of bronze medalist Mary-Sophie Harvey (2:09.15). In the 400m IM, Yu picked up her third 4th-place finish of the meet, swimming 4:33.76 to finish half-a-second off the podium, with Jenna Forrester and Mio Narita tying for silver in 4:33.26.
In addition to her individual swims, Yu also swam the lead-off leg of the Chinese women’s 4×200m free relay in the prelims, clocking 1:59.28, and then the team went on to win bronze in the final. That made the Yu the youngest swimmer ever to win a medal at the World Championships, having already become the youngest to reach a final when she did so at the beginning of the meet in the 200 IM.
Yu went on to thrown down a massive 2:07.41 in the 200m IM at the Chinese National Games in November, breaking the Asian and Chinese Record of 2:07.57 set by Ye Shiwen at the 2012 Olympic Games en route to winning the gold medal. That mark has since been snatched by countrywoman Yu Yiting, who threw down a 2:06.82 to snag the win over Yu earlier this week.
This is a crazy time for her age, but it’ll be interesting to see how long and how far she goes. The trajectory of the other two Chinese swimmers on this list don’t make it seem like it’ll go well. It seems like more often than not young Chinese phenoms burn out early.
I’m cautiously optimistic but for her sake I do hope she breaks the cycle and becomes one of the greats. Tbf to Schwein she is still making strides in other events like the 2 breast. But I do hope it doesn’t get to that point of burnout.
It really could go either way.
I’ll just wait and see. I think ‘She’ll go 4:40’ and ‘She’ll be a problem to Summer’ are both very immature predictions.
and by the time she’s 19 she’ll be going 4:40 just like every other Chinese teenage phenom
What’s the use of being jealous of a 13-year-old? No one in the U.S. can swim that fast, no matter how old they are.
Summer has a real problem in LA. This was the event i thought she was safest, but in 2 years Zidi could drop 7 seconds to catch Summer, she’s only 13, that’s not an absurd drop for this age
Summer is going to be sub 4:10 by LA
L bait
It’s highly likely zidi doesn’t come close to those drops. Most young swimmers don’t continue increasing in strength that quickly.
The most astonishing thing about this is we will look at a 13 year old go 4:30.7 and say “yeah, that makes sense” when it really should not be making any.
This is ridiculous
How tall is she?
She was 1.70m last summer, I saw reported somewhere. But being 12 then, she’s probably taller than that now.
That’s about 5’7″ in freedom units.
List absolutely riddled with Chinese teens, dunno why I didn’t see that coming
Time to address the elephant in the room. This event has been the weakest event for the U.S. women for far too long. Yeah we’ve had a few other women go 4:31 but Katie’s AR is still standing and we just had a 13 year old swim faster than it. But kuddos to Zidi that was an insane time and swim
It’s not surprising to me that the US record is still at 4:31. The rest of the world is mostly stuck there too.
The more strokes someone is truly talented in, obviously the better of a 400 IMer they’ll be, and the more likely they are to train all 4 strokes. That’s why we see such variability between 1st and 2nd and 1st and 8th in a 400 IM final in a way you won’t typically see in a 400 meter freestyle.
When there’s so many events to choose from, I think it makes sense that the 400 IM is a weaker one compared to what the peak performance can be.