South Korean Teenager Kim Young-beom Announces Relay World Record Goal for Worlds
South Korea is hardly known as a swimming powerhouse, having never won Olympic or World Championships medals in swimming until 2007. More recently, mid-distance freestyle has become a national strength, with Park Tae-hwan, Hwang Sun-woo and Kim Woo-min all securing individual medals. At last February’s World Championships in Doha, the Korean men won silver in the 800 free relay, just a tenth behind first-place China.
Now, the newest member of that Korean squad is setting a target on the world record. Kim Young-boem, just 19 years old, will join Hwang, Kim Woo-min and Lee Ho-jong on the squad at the World Championships in Singapore later this month, and during a pre-meet press conference at the Jincheon National Training Center, he expressed confidence that his group could break the global mark.
Kim Young-beom is best known for his abilities in the 100 free, the event in which he won gold at the Junior Pan Pacific Championships last year. He qualified for Worlds with a sizzling time of 47.96 at the Korean Championships in March, and he believes a sub-1:45 200-meter split is within his reach.
“I think I can go even faster than that,” he said, according to The Korea Times. “That’s why I’ve set this goal.”
The report described his teammates as caught off guard by the teenager’s announcement. Hwang said, “I don’t think we talked about this beforehand,” but upon further analysis, he saw the logic in his teammate’s proclamation.
“If we can each set our personal best times in splits, then we can definitely set the world record,” Hwang said. “Young-beom has the potential to get into the 1:44 range. He only started competing in the 200m freestyle this year and he’s been improving rapidly.”
The Korean record in the event is 7:01.73, set at the 2023 Asian Games, and the team was slightly slower at 7:01.94 in winning Worlds silver last year. Yang Jae-hoon swam with Hwang, Kim Woo-min and Lee at those meets as well as at the Paris Olympics, where the team ended up in sixth place and more than five seconds out of the medal picture. However, the time posted at the lightly-attended global meet five months earlier would have been enough for Olympic bronze.
Still, a significant gap remains to reach world-record pace. The global mark of 6:58.55 was set by the American team of Michael Phelps, Ricky Berens, David Walters and Ryan Lochte at the 2009 World Championships, the meet where polyurethane bodysuits contributed to the destruction of 43 world records. This relay mark has stood up despite strong challenges from British team at the last two Olympics.
Kim Woo-min, who won the world title in the 400 free last February before claiming Olympic bronze in the event in Paris, was “shocked” that Kim Young-beom mentioned the world record but added, “his energy rubs off on all of us. And setting the world record isn’t just a pipe dream for us.”
Of course, the Korean team will have tough competition if they want to earn a world title. The British foursome victorious in Tokyo and Paris will return intact while this year’s group from the United States has a very realistic shot at the world record after a series of sizzling 200 free performances at U.S. Nationals last month.
Read the full report from The Korean Times here.
