One of the most eye-popping swims of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, France was the men’s 100m freestyle where Chinese star Pan Zhanle ripped a new world record of 46.40.
Pan beat the field by over a second, with Olympic multi-medalist Aussie Kyle Chalmers settling for silver.
The drama unfolded after the race, however, where Pan told CCTV he felt snubbed by Chalmers and others, saying he was ignored while trying to say hello to Chalmers.
“After the 4×100 free relay, I went to say hi to Kyle [Chalmers] and he ignored me,” Pan said, translated from Chinese. “And while we were training, Jack Alexy [of the United States] splashed our coaches on the side of the pool with water while he was doing a flip turn. I felt that they looked down upon us, can I say this? And today I finally beat them all.”
Months later, Chalmers is now revealing that he and his family received ‘relentless death threats’ from Pan’s fans over the incident.
“It was very stressful in that period, getting heaps of death threats come through and pretty horrendous messages,” Chalmers told Adelaide Now.
“And then they started targeting my fiancee [Ingeborg Løyning] and family, and that becomes hard.
“Being on the other side of the world, you can’t do a lot about it.
“I’m trying to swim as well as check in on family who are in Paris, travelling around solo.” (Adelaide Now)
Chalmers further clarified for his part, “I don’t think there was any animosity ever. I feel like there was none from my point of view.
“I spoke to him in the marshalling room before the race. After the race, I went straight over, shook his hand in the pool. On the podium, shook his hand and we had a great conversation before we started that cooldown, just in regards to how great the race was.
“He just said about me being his idol and how much of an honour it was for him to swim against me … so all the conversations we’ve ever had have been positive.”
Focused on the future, Chalmers and Løyning are planning their wedding and Chalmers has returned to his labourer job while still training.
“I desperately want to make LA but I’m not going to be the best 100 freestyler in Australia forever, it’s just whether my body holds up until then,” said the 26-year-old South Australian.
“My mind definitely will, my mind wants to continue to go even through to Brisbane 2032, it would be amazing to go to a home Olympics, but I’m definitely a realist in the fact that I know there’s younger guys coming through in the sport who are going to beat me one day and I know that my body is going to give out inevitably at some point also.” (Adelaide Now)
I’m Chinese and I genuinely like Kyle, he just exudes the aussie mate vibe, chill, knows his game.
The two are both national treasures and they should enjoy the rivalry/companionship like Roger and Rafa.
Pan should have given Kyle benefit of the doubt. Though I admire Pan’s traightforwardness, I hope he learnt his lesson that quick words to the mouth could cause huge repercussion and you just could not harness those cyber trolls. I so hate it when other people have to suffer because of my mistake, I hope Kyle and his family could turn the page and don’t dwell on this.
As long as we are talking about trolls, enough already with the doping accusations on… Read more »
Chalmers, a world-class multimedalist swimmer, still has to work as a labourer? Man, swimming is still really tough to pursue as a professional, compared to so many other sports.
He just likes having something else outside of swimming.
He has said that the work is good for his mental health and he enjoys it. Sounds great to me!
The Aussies have been bashing Chinese swimmers for years. What did they expect?
So because some Australians criticise China (Americans do this way worse) then Kyle should have expected Pan to falsely claim that Kyle snubbed him and get relentless death threats for months?
Make it make sense
It’s not fair to say that Pan falsely claimed anything. All we have is Kyle’s comments and Pan’s comments.
You weren’t there and neither was I.
Regardless of what actually happened, saying an individual swimmer should expect death threats like it’s no big deal and/or their own fault is ridiculous.
And based on Pan’s later comments it seems like he agrees with Kyle that it was his misunderstanding
I mean here on swimswam we frequently see toxic exchanges between Regan and Kaylee fans despite that IRL the two are very wholesome individuals who seem to get along great
The internets ability to induce hysteria is a serious problem everywhere
Pan and his trolls need to zip it. Dude acts like he is the victim of some brutal assault on the deck. Dude is softer than charmin. Us real swimmers already deal with enough claims of being soft by other “more manly” sports/athletes. Thanks Pan for your contribution that image.
real swimmers? Is pan not real?
Purely a figment of your imagination
The Chinese trolls are out of control. And what about Pan? Who whines to the media that a swim coach got a bit splashed at someone’s flip turn? We get splashed 1000x a day. If you’re bothered by that, get another job.
So funny! Man when you splash a stranger without a simple apology, only Fake Americans Feel Nothing. And seeing you guys comments, I feel like you are impolite from the bottom of heart. And maybe that’s why young swimmers from US can’t have good performance, Dressel is one and Only. Please learn more from him. And get another job? Man he’s WR holder. The one who should run away from pool is others, not him. who are you?I don’t think Alexy is a bad boy, but his behavior should be better. You guys can’t bend the facts, we need to point out his fault to help him to be respected. I appreciate many Americans apologize to Pan for Alexy. They… Read more »
FST is from Germany, but yeah he’s known for crying about anything that has to do with China/Russia.
While I don’t endorse trolling on either side, the number of doping accusations under Pan’s Instagram posts are an indicator that trolls exist in every country, many of which come from the western hemisphere. Pan just doesn’t talk about them because he can’t be bothered.
Pan isn’t a guy who speaks lightly. The Chinese swim team was snubbed on a whole during the Olympics. Pan earned respect because of his phenomenal swims and great sportsmanship but you can’t deny racism was a big thing during the Olympics. The crowd wasn’t even cheering much for Pan’s record-breaking swim.
the Chinese team earned their snubs with their drugs
Also Pan was kind enough to clarify on national news that he felt he might have ran his mouth after the race and Chalmers might not have noticed him.
Also Pan was kind enough to clarify on national news that he felt he might have ran his mouth after the race and Chalmers might not have noticed him. He also complimented Chalmers on his career.
Yes but the damage had been done. Chalmers family will probably get death threats for years, just like Horton’s family did. Pan should absolutely have known better.
He’s a 19 year old kid who just got subjected to extensive drug tests and unwarranted racism, with the hope of the nation on his shoulders. He didn’t even do many interviews before that.
Perpetuators of racism will never understand the impact of it.
Also no one in China is still talking about Chalmers. People just find Pan’s remarks a rare dose of honesty. No one cares about this anymore on Weibo, get over it.
Scepticism over Chinese results has been rampant during the Paris Olympics but that’s still a far cry from racism, in light of recent findings – although no doubt, for many there was racism involved, neatly disguised as righteous outrage, implying that the scepticism was purely the result of racism is silly.
(Also, specifying racism as unwarranted is weird when there is no such thing as “warranted racism”).
Just admit that a lot of white people will never accept that an Asian guy like Pan can swim faster than them let alone shave off a significant amount of time off the WR. They’ve been tested so extensively idk what else you still want.
Also from what I saw from those Chinese sites nobody gives a crap about this anymore they just find Pan a brutally honest gen z teenager. Why do people still bring this up 😂
It’s not the first time that Kyle Chalmers likes to be a drama queen and make a bunch of excuses regarding injuries, preparation etc…
Can he explain to everyone why did he like Hawke’s “not humanly possible” video on IG right after he finished that 100 free final ?
Fwiw he did defend Pan to the media, also after the 100m free final. He said that he trusted his swim and deserved his gold medal:
https://swimswam.com/proud-chalmers-popovici-come-to-pan-zhanles-defense-after-questions-over-world-record/
How are you so sure he watched the entire video? Didn’t he also unfollowed him briefly afterwards?
Disappointed to see you guys have so much excuse, if Pan can be treated like that… He’s only 19 being attacked by others. he’s great and mentally strong
He wasn’t attacked by Chalmers. Give me a break.
Were you there??
Did Pan say he was? No. Was it witnessed by anyone? No. Did Chalmers attack Pan publicly in a verbal manner? No. There you go.
Of course, after the Chinese fans saw that and started responding, he quickly went to IG removed his like from that video, unfollowed Brett Hawke to act like nothing happened and then disabled the comments on his own IG.
Couple hours later, Hawke deleted that video. He then refollowed Brett couple weeks later on IG, after the drama was over.
Next time, if he wants to play the victim card, he needs to explain the full story.
His genuine reaction immediately after the final says more about his true feelings than any obscure social media activity.
Exactly the opposite. The Instagram activity was a calculated chain of events. Chalmers assumed it was obscure and wouldn’t be easily pieced together — as Dressel GOAT managed — revealing Chalmers’ thought process every step of the way.
I’ve seen that type of thing many times on Instagram in other sports. This time it worked particularly well because Chalmers’ Instagram handle appeared on top of the “Liked” summary, enabling the screen grab. Only one shared follower shows up on top, followed by the number of Likes. In this particular instance Chalmers “Liked” Hawke’s comment so quickly it merely says “and others” instead of the specific number. The early “Like” is very telling because it means Chalmers was anticipating a reaction… Read more »
“And others” isn’t an indication of how quickly you like something, it’s an indication of whether you’ve turned off like counts on a post.
I don’t mean to be ageist or whatever, but for most people around Chalmers’s age an insta like merits about as much thought as a single breath, not this long convoluted strategy. He could have just as well liked automatically upon seeing the poster (without actually contextualizing or listening to the post), and then later went back to remove it when he realised what he liked. He congratulated Pan “in the heat of the moment”, and it didn’t look calculated – that’s the most honest reaction you are going to get.
Kyle said they talked about it and change cap after that, It’s courageous for Pan to go to media and explain it’s a misunderstanding, they respect each other. So you don’t need to take it for a headline. I see somebody have an fake excuse for Jack Alexy. But Jack Alexy don’t even have an apology to Pan’s coach, if there is another US stuff stand in there, would Alexy splash the water with turn？A swimmer know what is intentional. Pan is a nice boy, very humble. Even ask “Can I say this?” If Alexy feel sorry about that, he would never remind, but he didn’t, he’s just impolite. I feel Ashamed. I appreciate what Leon Marchand deal with the… Read more »
I think you need to just stop.
Welcome to the website, by the way.
Yea, you should just stop. It is the rule that an athlete’s flip turn causes a splash. Coaches, swimmers, officials and even parents know this and move away from the target zone.