King Of Sports

In contrast, the performance of Meroli was very eye-catching. He grabbed first place from the beginning, he had the lead and opened up a gap.

Tang Yan was now in fourth place in the group.

"Meroli is really strong. It looks like his final result will be among the top five finalists!"

"Sun Yang is still on the scene. I wonder if he"ll make tactical adjustments for the finals after seeing his performance."

"Tang Yan is still struggling to catch up, it doesn"t look very promising for him."

"It"s hard to say what will happen, the swimmers of this session have performed very well. Although Tang Yan performed well in the national champions.h.i.+ps before, he doesn"t seem to be at his best today. "

"Tang Yan, come on!"

Seeing Tang Yan at the back, the audience on the sidelines couldn"t help but cheer for him loudly.

He smiled hearing the audience cheering for him. After turning again at the 200 meter mark, he began to increase the frequency of his kicks.

The effect of this change was quite obvious. Tang Yan began to pursue those ahead of him.

"Tang Yan is accelerating! It looks like he was saving his physical strength in the first half!" The side commentator said with excitement. Although he had doubts about Tang Yan"s performance before, he still looked pleased after seeing Tang Yan speeding up.

"He"s pa.s.sed third, the Australian John Williams!"

"He"s still accelerating, he"s ahead of second, the Canadian George Wells!"

"He"s chasing the last opponent in the group, Melori! My G.o.d!" With Tang Yan surpa.s.sing his opponents one by one, the commentator went into quick fire mode.

"Tang Yan"s cheated his opponents and we were also deceived." The other commentator said with a laugh at this time.

Tang Yan in the pool also seemed very excited at this time, not because he had overtaken his opponent one after another during this time, but because he found that his level and his current form after the national champions.h.i.+ps had truly undergone a qualitative leap.

Originally, he chose to upgrade the power of Zhang Shun in order to better master and increase his kick frequency to nine times. However, after the upgrade, his kick distance and physical fitness had been greatly improved.

Merori still led at the 250m mark, and when he turned his head, he found that the swimmer behind him was gaining, his brows wrinkled slightly.

When he turned around at the 300m mark, he found that the swimmer was Chinese, and he was even more surprised.

There were very few well-known swimmers from China, and in freestyle events it was even more pitiful. The best they had in his opinion was Sun Yang. In fact, he didn"t know the name of the Chinese swimmer who was chasing after him little by little.

But after sensing the threat, he chose to start accelerating ahead of time, and the frequency of his kicks increased significantly.

In the final 100 meters, Meroli made every effort and maintained his lead touching the wall first with one hand. After touching the wall, his whole person sunk tired in the pool, his face blus.h.i.+ng and his heartbeat racing.

Tang Yan, on the other hand, was in better condition, when he turned for the last 50 meters, he already knew that he had already secured a place in the finals in the evening in advance, so he chose to retain his strength.

Their times came up on the display screen.

Meroli had a time of 3 minutes, 45 seconds 11, his time ranked fourth overall.

Tang Yan"s result was 3 minutes 45 seconds 31, ranking fifth overall.

Counting Sun Yang, who came first in the preliminaries, it was the first time two Chinese swimmers made it into the finals.

This result made the audience full of expectations for the evening race.

The schedule for the swimming compet.i.tion was compact. At 12:30, the 4x100m freestyle preliminary compet.i.tion began.

There were two groups in the preliminary round and the top four overall would enter the final.

The Chinese team was made up of: Ning Zetao, Lu Zhibin, Sun Yang and Tang Yan.

In the end, with the outstanding performance of Sun Yang and Tang Yan in the second half, the Chinese team ranked fourth in the group and advanced to the evening finals.

Unfortunately it wasn"t all good news for the Chinese team, the women"s team didn"t reach the finals.

....

Different from the relatively dull daytime compet.i.tion, at night, the atmosphere in the entire venue changed a lot. The biggest difference was the media. Various media outlets from various countries came to the venue early and various live broadcasts were ongoing.

The reason for this apparent change, was because the finals tonight would give birth to 4 gold medals for the first day of compet.i.tion.

The Chinese media was also very excited at this time, because the first final in the evening was the 400-meter freestyle, in which they had two athletes in and to make it better it was Tang Yan and Sun Yang. 

Because there were no events in the afternoon, many swimmers went to the pool in advance to re-adapt to the venue. 

They didn"t come up from the pool until an hour before the race.

As soon as the swimmers came up, the media swarmed up, this was the last chance for an interview before the race. 

The German star and 400-meter freestyle world record holder Paul Biedermann was the first to go ash.o.r.e. As soon as he went up, he was surrounded by reporters and found no way out.

"Paul, tonight you will be greeted by a double team from Park Tae Hyun and Sun Yang. How are you feeling?" A Chinese reporter who seized a favorable position asked.

"Sun Yang"s form was very good this morning, Park Tae Hyun didn"t look as dangerous in the morning but I think he will kick it up a gear in the finals, but no matter who the opponent is, my goal is still the same as before, I came here for gold." Biederman said with a polite smile.

"What"s your impression on the other Chinese swimmer who made it into the finals? He defeated Sun Yang in the recent national champions.h.i.+ps and scored 3 minutes and 45 seconds in the preliminary round." Another reporter asked.

Biederman displayed a blank look.

The reporter seeing that Biederman was unresponsive, he finally said, "The Chinese swimmer, Tang Yan."

"Tang Yan?" Biedermann shook his head. "Who is that?"