Chen 0.02 seconds shy of women's 50m free national record

Seventeen-year-old Chen Xinyi won the women's 50-meter freestyle title in 24.53 seconds at the Chinese National Championships here on Sunday, just 0.02 seconds shy of the national mark set by Le Jingyi at the Rome World Championships 22 years ago.

Guangdong's Liu Xiang came second in 24.75, while the bronze was shared by Zhejiang pair Wu Yue and the 100m champion Zhu Menghui, on 25.31.

In the men's 1,500m freestyle, with the absence of Olympic and world champion Sun Yang, Shanghai native Qiu Zi'ao won in 14:58.34, his personal best and world fifth in the year.

"I improved about one second," said Qiu. "But I felt exhausted after the first half."

His teammate Wang Zhou came second in 15:10.86, and Biyi's Qiao Zhongyi took third in 15:23.27.

Sunday also held two 4x100m medley relay finals. Zhejiang won the men's relay in 3:35.40, while Jiangsu dominated the women's in 4:00.86.

Except the men's 400m medley event which only Wang Shun reached the Olympic A standard, the Chinese swimmers made full qualification for all the other individual events. And the men's 4x200m freestyle relay remains the only relay which has not qualified for the Olympic Games yet, but quite hopeful after a 7:13.19 set at the Nationals.

"We will keep trying to qualify for the men's 400m medley," said Chinese swimming team leader Xu Qi, who praised young swimmers' performances at the Championships but said Rio Olympic Games will be very difficult.

"It will be more difficult than the World Championships last year," said Xu. "Sun Yang and Ye Shiwen is not fully recovered, while Fu Yuanhui is in bad form recently." Endi