Kim Yeong-beom Wins Men's 50m Freestyle Gold, South Korea's First Swimming Gold [AG Video]

Kim Yeong-beom (Gangwon State Government) has captured South Korea's first gold medal of the 2026 Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games.

Kim touched the wall first in a new tournament record time of 21.66 seconds in the men's 50m final held at the Tokyo Aquatics Centre in Japan on the 21st.

With this victory, South Korean swimming has secured back-to-back titles in the event, following Ji Yu-chan (Daegu Metropolitan City Government) at the 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games.

Having claimed the silver medal in the 100m freestyle yesterday, Kim added a gold medal just a day later, emerging as the frontrunner in the South Korean delegation's medal race at this tournament.

During the preliminaries held this morning, Kim set a new tournament record of 21.71 seconds to advance to the final in first place overall, while defending champion Ji Yu-chan finished third overall in the preliminaries with 22.23 seconds.

Kim's preliminary time of 21.71 seconds shaved 0.01 seconds off the previous tournament record of 21.72 seconds set by Ji Yu-chan when he won the gold medal at the 2022 Hangzhou Games.


In the final, Kim further lowered his preliminary time by 0.05 seconds with an explosive race, continually breaking the tournament record.

The two swimmers engaged in a fierce battle in the final as well.

Starting from lane 4, Kim recorded a reaction time of 0.66 seconds upon entry and surged to the front with an explosive spurt to claim the top of the podium.

The silver medal went to Ian Yentou Ho of Hong Kong, who clocked 21.76 seconds.

Ji Yu-chan, racing from lane 3 in pursuit of consecutive tournament titles, touched the pad in 21.94 seconds to take the bronze medal.

(Photo: Yonhap News)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.