Olympic Champion Pan Zhanle Clocks New Chinese, World Cup Records In 800 Free

2024 WORLD AQUATICS SWIMMING WORLD CUP – INCHEON

Pan Zhanle of China continued to impress at the 2024 World Aquatics Swimming World Cup in Incheon, Korea.

After upsetting a stacked men’s 400m freestyle field on day one, the reigning 100m free Olympic champion and world record holder doubled up with gold in the 800m free on the final night of action.

20-year-old Pan stopped the clock at a head-turning 7:35.30. That handily defeated the field, with the next-closest swimmer Kim Junwoo of the host nation touching nearly 4 seconds later in 7:39.15. Japan’s Kazushi Imafuku rounded out the podium in 7:40.77.

Pan’s effort this evening established a new World Cup record, with this performance overtaking the previous mark of 7:35.58 Italian Olympian Gabriel Detti put on the books in 2017.

The World Aquatics swimming database doesn’t list a SCM 800 free performance for Pan although his outing tonight now rendered him the Chinese record holder. His massive outing here easily wiped out the previous Chinese standard of 7:37.74 Fei Liwei established at the 2022 national short course championships.

The Asian record remains at the 7:33.78 Japan’s Shogo Takeda logged at the 2022 World Championships but Pan is now the 2nd-best Asian performer ever behind him.

As we reported after his 400m free victory, Pan’s foray into the mid-distance events isn’t entirely out of character for the fastest 100m freestyler in history. He was primarily focused on the longer events until he started training for sprints during the COVID-19 pandemic.