The 19th Chinese university student swim championship of was held on the Yuzhong campus of Lanzhou University recently. The Tianjin University (TJU) swim team fought tenaciously, winning the women's 800 m freestyle gold medal, women's 1500 m freestyle silver, men’s 1500 m freestyle silver, men’s 50 m butterfly silver, 1 fourth place, 3 fifth place, 1 sixth place, 2 seventh place, seventh in the men’s 4 x100m medley relay and eighth in the men’s 4 x100m freestyle relay.
The national college students swimming championship is the highest individual competition for college students sponsored by the China College Students’ Sports Association of the Ministry of Education. The competition attracted more than 500 contestants from more than 50 universities, including Tsinghua University, Peking University and Tianjin University. 2020 is the year of the national Universiade (aka the world university games), and this championship is the last opportunity for these student athletes to compete. This competition is highly respected by all schools. Han Wenjun, the secretary of the TJU sports department, and Ma Shoufeng, the secretary of the party committee of the management and economics department, came to the scene to cheer for the athletes.
This is the first time for the TJU swim team to establish a new medium and long distance group as a new attempt to participate in the national competition. The primary team lineup for the competition are all freshman. The swim team united as one and fought bravely for TJU to achieve a historic breakthrough, winning the gold and silver medals in the long-distance events for the first time in TJU history.. It is particularly worth mentioning that all the participants in the two relay events are freshmen and none of them are the first string swimmers in these two events. But they all worked together, played well, played with high spirits, and made it to the final. With an excellent record of 52.86 seconds, Zhong Yixin surpassed the individual runner-up's record of 53.15 seconds in the 100m freestyle relay.
In order to prepare for the competition, all the athletes and coaches insisted in training from winter vacation to summer vacation. Facing the intense training task, the students did not slacken their studies. Among the participants, Yang Hanqin and Wang Zhikai ranked first and second in their majors respectively.
By: Zhang Yimeng
Editors: Qin Mian and Keith Harrington
