KOR
▲ South Korea's Kim Young-beom claims the gold medal, while the previous champion Ji Yoo-chan takes the bronze, in the men's 50m individual freestyle final at the 2026 Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games held at the Tokyo Aquatics Centre on the 21st.
Kim Young-beom (Gangwon State Government) has captured South Korea's first gold medal of the 2026 Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games.
Competing in the men's 50m final at the Tokyo Aquatics Centre in Japan on the 21st, Kim touched the wall first with a new tournament record of 21.66 seconds.
With this victory, South Korean swimming secured back-to-back titles in this event, following Ji Yoo-chan (Daegu Metropolitan City Government) at the 2022 Hangzhou Games.
Having claimed the silver medal in the 100m freestyle yesterday, Kim added a gold medal just a day later, establishing himself as the frontrunner for South Korea's medal race at this competition.
During the preliminary heats 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 Yoo-chan finished third overall in the preliminaries with 22.23 seconds.
Kim's time of 21.71 seconds shaved 0.01 seconds off the previous tournament record of 21.72 seconds set by Ji Yoo-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, consecutively breaking the tournament record.
The two athletes engaged in a fierce battle in the final as well.
Starting from lane 4, Kim recorded a reaction time of 0.66 seconds before surging into the lead with an explosive sprint to claim the top spot.
The silver medal went to Ian Yentou Ho of Hong Kong, who clocked 21.76 seconds.
Ji Yoo-chan, swimming from lane 3 in pursuit of his second consecutive tournament title, 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.
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