During the test match, Tang Yan"s turning error was due to not accounting for his speed and judging the distance accurately.But after Shen Qing"s training and mentoring for more than a month, he felt like he had it on lock.
Flipping forward, turning over, touching the wall and kicking his legs.
Tang Yan successfully made the turn, he maintained a large amount of his speed and increased his lead coming out of the turn.
His rapid turn further fueled the crowd.
The second leg back was a test of the swimmers endurance.
This wasn"t traditional long-distance endurance but sustained endurance.
The audience was concerned for Tang Yan. He had spent his last 50m chasing hectically.
In the first 10m of the second half, the distance between Tang Yan and Li Yuhuan didn"t change.
This long-lasting performance attracted the attention of the other coaches, after such a violent front-end rush he was still able to maintain such a fast speed back.
Suddenly then, like flicking on a switch several swimmers kicked it up a notch and began to exert their all.
The pack began to gain on the front leaders and Li Yuhuan who was strong in the first half of the race had his lead gradually narrowed.
This caused the mood of the audience to once again become ignited.
Tang Yan seeing the pack completely exerted all his force and expanded his lead, he forced everyone to kick it up another notch to keep up.
Liu Yuhuan, who was still struggling to catch up behind him, became distraught seeing this scene.
Tang Yan managed to hold back the pack of wolves and touch the wall first.
From behind to first, the strength of Tang Yan"s 100m shocked everyone at the venue.
His individual time was difficult to calculate, but many coaches roughly calculated it to be around 48 seconds.
His time should exceed the A grade criteria for the World Champions.h.i.+ps or hover just outside it.
Third in the relay for Zhejiang was Sun Yang. Although his main events were long distance events, his main discipline was freestyle, 100m was no problem for him.
Sure enough, after Sun Yang dived in, Tang Yan"s previous lead was further expanded. When he finished the lead was about a metre.
Because of Tang Yan"s excellent performance, everything underwent a drastic change.
The Zhejiang Province was looking poised to win this group, the final swimmer for them was Lu Zhibin.
When Sun Yang arrived back and touched the wall Lu Zhibin was straight in.
Although the third swimmer for Hubei had tried their best, when he touched the wall, they trailed by a significant amount.
"It"s looking like we"ll have to congratulate the Zhejiang Province, especially Tang Yan, this rookie who has emerged from both the fields of archery and boxing, has once again shocked us."
At this time, Tang Yan was staring over intently at a swimmer called Ning Xuantao in the second lane.
He knew that this swimmer was among one of the strongest freestyle short-distance swimmers for China in the future. Just a tier below Sun Yang.
Sure enough, although still behind, Ning Xuantao was narrowing in on Lu Zhibin.
The now somewhat placid crowd heated up sensing another upheaval.
This race had become more exciting than an action movie. There had been two reversals of the plot already.
On the turn back Ning Xuantao didn"t slow, he continued to creep up on Lu Zhibin.
Perhaps due to his stable lead, Lu Zhibin was too at ease but sensing the threat he hectically accelerated and instantly opened up the distance.
However, at this time, Ning Xuantao accelerated again and continued to close in with speed visible to the naked eye.
Lu Zhibin was quite experienced at the 100-meters freestyle but Ning Xuantao"s performance was completely beyond his expectations and what made him horrified was his speed.
He put his all into das.h.i.+ng for the finish line.
At the last 10 meters, the distance between the two was extremely close.
At this critical moment, the audience stood up and cheered for the two.
They were neck to neck.
The two rushed towards the finish line and reached for the wall earnestly.
Spat!
Spat!
The audience looked up stunned.
This race was truly way too dramatic.
On the electronic screen display, it showed....Ning Xuantao had taken the lead at the last moment beating out Lu Zhibin by 0.03 seconds.
This speed, which was undetectable by the naked eye, meant that Ning Xuantao reversed everything once again and clinched first place for the Hubei swimming team.
The centre broke into ecstatic applause, this was just the group preliminaries but they had already seen such a thrilling race, what would the finals be like.
At this time, the most disappointed were the four of the Zhejiang Team.
The worst feeling was having victory at your fingertips and then having it s.n.a.t.c.hed away.
Lu Zhibin apologized to his teammates repeatedly and his teammates comforted him.
Tang Yan was still focused on Ning Xuanta, who was still breathing heavily in the pool.
He couldn"t help but wonder what would have happened if he was put last.
Could he defeat Ning Xuantao at his current level?
Maybe just about but unfortunately, coach chose Lu Zhibin.
However, Ning Xuantao"s performance was also somewhat unexpected. In his memory, Ning Xuantao"s fame peaked around when he was 20-21. He didn"t expect such strength from him at this stage.
He was younger than Tang Yan at 17 years old.
He now began to understand where China"s rise in the swimming world had come from in his previous life.
China had given birth to a great number of rising talents who would usher in a new age of swimming for the country.
This is why the Zhejiang Province had suffered stunning defeats on the first day, as these talents filtered through their status quo would be challenged but luckily they had prodigies of their own...