Chinese Women Remain Undefeated With Games Record In 800 Free Relay

SWIMMING AT THE 2018 ASIAN GAMES

• August 19th-24th, 2018
• Jakarta, Indonesia
• Schedule & Results

China kept their unbeaten streak alive in the women’s 800 free relay at the Asian Games on day 3 in Jakarta, as they lowered their 2010 record of 7:51.81 by over three seconds in 7:48.61. The Chinese women have now won all six 800 free relays contested at the Games going back to 1998 in Bangkok.

They were led off by Li Bingjie in 1:56.94, opening up an advantage of over seven-tenths over Japan’s Chihiro Igarashi (1:57.69). They then had their fastest split come on the second leg, as Wang Jianjiahe threw down a 1:55.35, but failed to gain any ground on Japan as Rikako Ikee posted the top split in the field in 1:55.27. However, they pulled away comfortably on the back-half with Zhang Yuhan (1:58.37) and Yang Junxuan (1:57.95) bringing them into the finish over five seconds ahead of Japan.

Below, check out a split comparison of the new and old records from the Chinese teams. Going leg-by-leg, all of the splits are fairly close to each other than Wang’s 1:55.3 on the #2 leg, out-splitting Liu Jing‘s 1:58.07 by 2.72 seconds.

Japan faded towards the end but still was a clear 2nd in 7:53.83. Earlier this month at the Pan Pacific Championships they were nearly five seconds faster – 7:48.96 – swimming the same lineup. Their biggest discrepancy between those two swims came from Yui Ohashi, who was 2:01.33 here after winning the 400 IM earlier in the session. In Tokyo she split 1:58.10.

While China’s swim is quicker than Japan was at Pan Pacs, it falls short of the medalists there: Australia (7:44.12), the U.S. (7:44.37) and Canada (7:47.28). They were, however, faster than everyone at the European Championships, making them the 4th-fastest nation this year.