2024 Paris Olympic Champs Of China Miss Men’s 4×100 Medley Relay Final, Australia Also Misses

2025 World Championships

MEN’S 4×100 MEDLEY RELAY– Prelims

  • World Record: USA (R. Murphy, M. Andrew, C. Dressel, Z. Apple) — 3:26.78 (2021)
  • World Championship Record: USA — 3:27.20 (2023)
  • 2024 Olympic Champions: China (J. Xu, H.Qin, J. Sun, Z. Pan) — 3:27.46
  • 2023 World Champions: USA (R. Murphy, N. Fink, D. Rose, J. Alexy) – 3:27.20

Top 8 Qualifiers

  1. United States- 3:29.65
  2. Neutral Athletes ‘B’- 3:30.05
  3. Italy- 3:30.40
  4. Canada- 3:30.86
  5. Netherlands- 3:31.07
  6. Great Britain- 3:31.75
  7. France- 3:32.35
  8. Korea- 3:32.54

China, the 2024 Paris Olympic Champions in the men’s 4×100 medley relay, has missed the final of the event as the relay of Wang Shun, Qin Haiyang, Xu Fang, and Pan Zhanle finished 9th in a 3:32.69. It took a 3:32.54 to make final.

Qin Haiyang and Pan Zhanle were members of China’s relay that swam to gold at the 2024 Paris Olympics in a 3:27.46. The country swam a 3:31.58 during prelims in Paris to be the #2 seed heading into finals.

Split Comparison

2025 Worlds Prelims
2024 Paris Final
Back Wang Shun 53.96 Xu Jiayu 52.37
Breast Qin Haiyang 59.58 Qin Haiyang 57.98
Fly Xu Fang 51.39 Sun Jiajun 51.19
Free Pan Zhanle 47.76 Pan Zhanle 45.92
3:32.69 3:27.46

Xu Jiayu was the team’s highest finisher in the individual 100 back as he swam a 53.14 in semifinals for 11th but was not used this morning. Qin Haiyang and Pan Zhanle were over a second and a half slower this morning than they were in Paris. Pan Zhanle, the World Record holder in the 100 freestyle, missed the individual final of the event earlier in the meet. Qin Haiyang swam to gold in the 100 breast this week.

Also missing the final was Australia who finished 11th in a 3:32.87. Kyle Chalmers anchored in a 48.35, the 18th fastest free relay split of the field (out of 25 relays). The Australian men were 6th in Paris in a 3:31.86.

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Thomas The Tank Engine
10 months ago

This World Championship is crazy…and I love it! 😁

Dee
10 months ago

Kornev runs down France for gold, Alexy runs down Italy for bronze.

Henry A will sort out Australia’s backstroke problem soon enough, but their breastrokers are so poor that there is really not much hope for their medley over the next couple of years.

AtaraxiaCHN
10 months ago

Deeply disappointed by gold medalist Qin’s split, as well as the collective decline of Zhejiang Province’s swimmers throughout the World Championships. Before the competition, we believed the results couldn’t be worse than 2022, yet they proved just as dismal.
The Zhejiang provincial officials, only care about the National Games, completely neglected this World Championships, provide no helpful training support or strengthen the coaching staff. This directly led to the severe performance regression of Pan, Xu Jiayu, and nearly all Zhejiang swimmers.
Team China’s head coach Cui Dengrong only focus on his former group’s swimmers, abandoned the 4x200m freestyle relay, leaving the grandstand early. Yet the only relay event that seemed hopeless to them turned out to be the… Read more »

Shark
Reply to  AtaraxiaCHN
10 months ago

The whole provincial system is disgusting to the core. They’d rather devote resources to training 10 more national level athletes from Zhejiang than actually hire people to take care of Pan’s shoulder injury and cough. Wang Shun is an overused, selfless veteran hero who Zhejiang is more than lucky to have.

Zaj
10 months ago

The olympic champion was out. They should use xu jiayu instead of wang shun. If they qualify for final , i think the quartet will be Xu, Qin, Chen and Pan.

hang
Reply to  Zaj
10 months ago

That’s for sure. Xu Jiayu’s current physical condition can’t handle too much strain. In recent years, China has overused him in both the heats and finals, which we don’t want to see. Our second-best backstroke swimmer in China is really not up to par. Right now, Xu Jiayu is the only Chinese male backstroker who can compete at the international level. If Xu Jiayu retires in the future and our second-best backstroker hasn’t developed, then both the men’s medley relay and the mixed medley relay will lose all medal competitiveness. This is a pretty bad situation, and it’s just the beginning of the problems becoming apparent.

cheese
10 months ago

After the egregious misses for USA and Australia in previous relays, seeing China miss here just makes this meet feel even more bonkers. That said, I actually kind of enjoy the fact that all of these teams effectively have to put their heavy hitters in early. The best needing to maintain their best makes it feel so much more competitive. I’d lean on the NAB athletes to snag gold. They feel similarly positioned with the advantage to actually sub in their A-team that the USA women’s team has.

Facts
10 months ago

The biggest lesson to swimmers at worlds overall besides avoiding sickness is that to be the man/woman at night you also have to be the man/woman in the morning

Last edited 10 months ago by Facts
NightFlyer
Reply to  Facts
10 months ago

The reason I like swimming is because racing.

NoFastTwitch
10 months ago

First bad relay split I’ve ever seen from Chalmers

hang
10 months ago

As a Chinese person, I feel that at this World Championships, our athletes seemed a bit too relaxed during the heats and semifinals. They either barely made it to the finals or were very close to eighth place in the semifinals. However, most of them performed excellently in the finals. In the men’s medley relay this time, we saw how risky it was for China not to field Xu Jiayu and to have no top backstroke swimmer in the heats. At last year’s Olympics, the Chinese team didn’t take too many risks in the relay heats, and now I think that was the right approach. In the past two major competitions, Italy was eliminated in the men’s medley relay heats… Read more »

Shark
Reply to  hang
10 months ago

I’d blame the coaches. Awful mental prep and strategies.

About Anya Pelshaw

Anya Pelshaw

Anya has been with SwimSwam since June 2021 as both a writer and social media coordinator. She was in attendance at the 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, and 2026 Women's NCAA Championships writing and doing social media for SwimSwam. She also attended 2023 US Summer Nationals as well as the 2024 …

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