Both Hwang Sunwoo & Lee Ho-Joon Hit 1:45 200 Free In Korea After Aussie Camp

By Retta Race on SwimSwam

2023 KOREAN SWIMMING CHAMPIONSHIPS

• Saturday, March 25th – Thursday, March 3oth
• Gimcheon, Korea
• LCM (50m)
• World Championships Qualifier
• Day 1 Recap/Day 2 Recap/Day 3 Recap
• Results

World champion Hwang Sunwoo was back in the water on day four of the 2023 Korean Swimming Championships, with the 19-year-old topping the men’s 200m freestyle podium.

Hwang punched a winning effort of 1:45.36 to easily clear the World Aquatics ‘A’ cut needed for this summer’s World Championships, but he wasn’t alone in his sub-1:46 effort.

Runner-up Lee Ho-Joon also turned some heads by grabbing a stellar silver in 1:45.70. Kim Woomin rounded out the top 3 in a mark of 1:46.10 for bronze, while Yang Jaehoon placed 4th in 1:48.13.

While Hwang owns a lifetime best and Korea national record of 1:44.47 from when he earned silver in the event at last year’s World Championships, the other two podium placements posted personal bests in tonight’s race.

Entering this competition, 22-year-old Lee’s career-quickest rested at the 1:46.99 he posted in October of last year while 21-year-old Kim’s PB was represented by the 1:47.69 he put up in March of 2022.

With that in mind, both Lee and Kim knocked over a second off of their best-ever performances with their outings. Additionally, Lee becomes just the third swimmer in Korean history to have dipped under the 1:46 threshold, joining Hwang and Olympic medalist Park Tae Hwan.

Hwang already resides in the #1 slot in the season’s world rankings, courtesy of the 1:44.47 he notched at last October’s Korean Sports Festival.

Lee, however, now slides into the rankings as the #2 swimmer.

The men’s 200m free results are especially significant considering the top 4 finishers just finished a 35-day training stint in Australia under storied coach Richard Scarce.

As we’ve reported, South Korea has its eyes on potentially making history at the Asian Games this September, aiming for gold in the men’s 4x200m free relay.

Training with Scarce was an important building block along the way, with Hwang saying of the training down under, “I was quite surprised by the intensity of coach Scarce’s training at first, which was 1.3, 1.4 times more intense than what I had done in Korea”

The best men’s 4x200m freestyle relay result achieved by the nation at an Asian Games was represented by a silver medal captured in 1994.

At the last edition of the Asian Games in 2018, Japan took the men’s 4x200m free relay gold in a collective effort of 7:05.17. Adding up tonight’s results, the top 4 finishers at these Korean Championships, all with flat starts, would combine for a time of 7:05.29, just .12 off of that gold medal performance.

2018 Asian Games Men’s 4x200m Free Relay Gold Medal (JPN)	2023 Korean Championships Collective Time of Top 4 Individual 200m Free Finishers
Naito Ehara – 1:47.31	Hwang Sunwoo -1:45.36
Reo Sakata -1:46.51	Lee Ho-jun – 1:45.70
Kosuke Hagino – 1:46.50	Kim Woomin -1:46.10
Katsuhiro Matsumoto – 1:44.85	Yang Jaehun – 1:48.13
7:05.17	7:05.29

SwimSwam: Both Hwang Sunwoo & Lee Ho-Joon Hit 1:45 200 Free In Korea After Aussie Camp