2024 WORLD AQUATICS SWIMMING WORLD CUP-SHANGHAI
- Friday, October 18th – Sunday, October 20th
- Shanghai, China
- Prelims at 9:30 am local (9:30 pm ET previous night)/Finals at 6:30 pm local (6:30 am ET)
- SCM (25m)
- Meet Central
- Event Schedule
- Entries Book
- Live Results
The anticipation for the first stop of the Swimming World Cup series in Shanghai was huge—finals tickets reportedly sold out well before the meet kicked off on Oct. 18. The Chinese fans had plenty to cheer about over the first night of finals, including in the final two events when Yu Yiting and Wang Shun closed out the session with Asian record in the 100 IM.
The women’s race was first; there, the 19-year-old Yu went head-to-head with Olympic champion Kate Douglass. Yu pulled into the lead on the breaststroke leg off a 16.96 split and though Douglass caught her on the freestyle, she held for second place with an Asian record of 57.51 to the cheers of the crowd.
Yu’s swim breaks the former Asian record of 57.75, which Japan’s Rikako Ikee swam at the 2017 World Cup. Splits at the 2017 World Cup seem to have been done only by 50, but Ikee was out in 26.20, seven-hundredths ahead of Yu. Yu, a 200 and 400 IM specialist, used her breaststroke (16.96) and freestyle (14.28) to battle back against Ikee’s butterfly speed and break the record by .24 seconds.
Additionally, Yu’s swim moves her up to the sixth-fastest performer in 100 IM history ahead of Alicia Coutts and Marrit Steenbergen (T-7, 57.53)
Top Six All-Time Women’s 100 IM (SCM):
- Katinka Hosszu, Hungary — 56.61 (2017)
- Kate Douglass, United States — 56.99 (2024)
- Sarah Sjostrom, Sweden — 57.10 (2017)
- Beryl Gastaldello, France — 57.30 (2020)
- Charlotte Bonnet, France — 57.47 (2023)
- Yu Yiting, China — 57.51 (2024)
Then, it was Wang Shun‘s turn. The Tokyo 200 IM Olympic medalist was in one of the deepest fields of the night as it included the likes of Paris medallists Leon Marchand, Duncan Scott, Thomas Ceccon, and Pan Zhanle. The front of the race was dominated by a close race between Marchand and Noe Ponti, who were separated by just .01 at the finish.
Wang touched the wall in fourth, behind that pair and Duncan Scott, who all swam national records of their own. Wang stopped the clock at 51.24, not only setting a Chinese record but cracking Daiya Seto‘s Asian record of 51.29. The men’s 100 IM Asian record has been a game of hundredths; when Seto took the record in 2021, he did so by slicing .01 off Kosuke Hagino‘s mark from 2014.
Both the 2017 and 2021 World Cups only captured splits by 50s, which makes it a challenge to do a stroke for stroke comparison between Yu and Ikee as well as Wang and Seto. However, Seto was out in 23.64, meaning that Wang was under pace when he made his back-to-breast turn at 23.42. Seto was strong on the back half, but Wang was able to hold on down the stretch with a 12.83 freestyle leg to keep himself five-hundredths ahead of Seto’s time.
