Swimming

A Review Of 11-Yr-Old Yu Zidi’s Results At 2024 Chinese Nationals

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By Retta Race on SwimSwam

2024 CHINESE NATIONAL SWIMMING CHAMPIONSHIPS

With the penultimate day of action unfolding tonight at the 2024 Chinese National Swimming Championships we’re taking stock of some of the most impressive performances put up at the Olympic-qualifying competition.

Although most headlines involved powerhouse senior athletes Pan Zhanle, Zhang Yufei and Qin Haiyang, we kept our eyes on an 11-year-old female named Yu Zidi.

We already reported how Yu turned in 2 eye-catching swims in the 400m IM and 400m free. The young budding star turned in times of 4:40.97 and 4:10.73, respectively, to put her name on the map of ones to watch.

But the 11-year-old was in the water several times outside of those 2 performances taking on a hefty schedule which totaled a massive 10 events.

Yu wound up nailing personal bests in 9 of these races, wreaking havoc on multiple distances.

We’ve listed them below with where she would rank among all-time American 11-12-year-old girls just as a point of comparison.

11-Yr-Old Yu Zidi‘s Performances at the 2024 Chinese National Championships

  • 50m free – 26.41, #3
  • 100m free – 56.32, #1
  • 200m free -2:00.32, #1
  • 400m free – 4:10.73, #1
  • 800m free – 8:45.47, #1
  • 1500m free – 16:46.40, #1
  • 100 back – 1:05.06, #12
  • 100m breast – 1:14.41, #30
  • 200m fly – 2:14.04, #1
  • 400m IM – 4:40.97, #1

The South China Morning Post reports that ‘Yu was born in Baoding, Hebei province in October 2012. When she was nine years old, she was scouted at a swimming meet and offered the chance to move to neighbouring city Hengshui so that she could train at Club Swimming and join the provincial team.’

Yu Zidi came to the club in December 2021 for the Hebei Provincial Swimming Training programme,” a spokesman for Club Swimming said.

“The club regularly undertakes training sessions for Hebei’s young swimmers and selects talents from these sessions.’ (SCMP)

SwimSwam: A Review Of 11-Yr-Old Yu Zidi’s Results At 2024 Chinese Nationals

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