2025 Swammy Awards: Asian Male Swimmer of the Year – Qin Haiyang (CHN)

See all of our 2025 Swammy Awards here.

For the third year in a row, our Swammy for Asian Male Swimmer of the Year is awarded to an athlete hailing from the nation of China.

Upgrading his status from honorable mention in 2024 and pairing with his Swammy from 2023, 26-year-old Qin Haiyang was the runaway winner due to his speedy performances at this year’s World Championships.

After a dominant performance at the 2023 World Championships and then a lackluster Olympic showing, Qin collected a trio of individual medals and one relay medal this year in Singapore to help China place 6th in the overall swimming medal table.

The ace topped the men’s 100 and 200 breaststroke podiums, producing respective times of 58.23 and 2:07.41 en route to gold in each final. The victories marked a return to the top after a poor 2024 Olympic campaign, where he finished 7th in the 100 breast and 10th in the 200 breast after dominating both races at the 2023 World Championships.

His swims in Singapore weren’t quite up to the level he showed in 2023, but both were his fastest times produced in two years.

In addition to his double gold in the 100 and 200 breast, he secured bronze in the 50 breast in 26.67 and was a member of China’s silver medal-winning mixed medley relay.

But Qin wasn’t done competing for the year, as the Olympian and 200 breast world record holder raced at the Asian Aquatics Championships in September, as well as the Chinese National Games in November.

At the former, Qin successfully completed a sweep of the men’s breaststroke events, proving he is one of the most consistent swimmers on the planet.

Qin stopped the clock at 59.07 to get the job done in the 100 breast, also earning gold in the 50 in 26.99 and adding the title in the 200 breast in 2:09.45.

Although he was disqualified in the 50m breast at the National Games, Qin managed to dominate both the 100 and 200 fields as a follow-up to the World Championships.

Racing in the men’s 100 breast, Qin stopped the clock at a time of 58.98 and punched a result of 2:07.69 to dominate the 200 breast wire-to-wire, getting to the wall over two seconds ahead of his competitors.

Qin concludes 2025 ranked #1 in the world in the 100 breast, #3 in the 200 breast, and #5 in the 200 breast.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

• Zhanshuo Zhang (CHN) – Zhang won his senior World Championship gold last February in the 4×200 free relay, but it is with hardware of a different color this year that he truly announced himself. He dragged China to a fantastic silver medal in the 4×200 free relay this summer with a 1:44.20 split, third-fastest in the field and well over a second faster than his flat-start best of 1:45.85 from the individual semi-finals. That explains why his 1:44.86 swim to win the event in China’s National Games didn’t get the fanfare you might expect – for a swimmer of his undoubted quality, this was simply par for the course. He set a World Junior record of 3:42.82 in the 400 there as well, dropping two seconds from the 3:44.82 he swam to finish 5th in Singapore, slicing 0.17 seconds off the 3:42.99 he swam back in early September. The fastest junior 400 freestyler since Ian Thorpe, Zhang was China’s top male performer this year.
• Tatsuya Murasa (JPN) – Like Zhang, Murasa did not compete at World Juniors this year, but made the most of his first-ever senior Worlds. Having set a best of 1:45.67 to qualify for Singapore, he clipped that with a 1:45.39 in the semi-finals there before rocketing to a Japanese Record of 1:44.54 in the final to win bronze. Having touched 8th after 50 meters, he kept all four 50s under 27 seconds, a feat only matched by eventual champion David Popovici. He didn’t break 1:45.5 this fall, but added a new best of 48.43 in the 100 free and 3:46.73 in the 400, and will be a major threat next year at Pan Pacs. The only male junior individual medalist in Singapore, he is just the fourth junior swimmer to make a world 200 free final this Millenium, joining Zhang Lin (2005), Danila Izotov (2009), and David Popovici (2022, 2023), To boot, he now ranks 15th all-time in the event, and 3rd among junior swimmers behind Izotov and Popovici.
• Hwang Sunwoo (KOR) –Although 22-year-old Hwang landed off the podium at this year’s World Championships, the Olympian made history at the Korean National Sports Festival two months later. Racing the men’s 200m freestyle on his home turf Hwang busted out a lifetime best of 1:43.92 to join the exclusive sub-1:44 club. His effort overtook the longstanding Asian Record of 1:44.39 that China’s Sun Yang put on the books at the 2017 World Championships. Entering this competition, Hwang’s lifetime best and Korean national record stood at the 1:44.40 he notched at the 2023 Asian Games. The two-time Olympian’s 1:43.92 effort rendered him the 7th-best performer of all time.

PREVIOUS WINNERS

• 2024 – Pan Zhanle, China
• 2023 – Qin Haiyang, China
• 2022 – Hwang Sunwoo, South Korea
• 2021 – Wang Shun, China
• 2020 – Kosuke Hagino, Japan
• 2019 – Daiya Seto, Japan
• 2018 – Daiya Seto, Japan
• 2017 – Sun Yang, China
• 2016 – Kosuke Hagino, Japan
• 2015 – Sun Yang, China
• 2014 – Kosuke Hagino, Japan
• 2013 – Sun Yang, China

Sam Blacker contributed to this report.