Wu Peng, popularly regarded as China's best Olympic swimming hope, said he was in an easy mind and would adjust himself to the best form before his race against American sensation Michael Phelps.

"Thanks to my buddy Zhang Lin. He has accomplished the mission to earn China the first Olympic medal for men's (swimming) team. It's great relief to me since I was also widely expected to fulfill that objective," Wu said after a semifinal for the men's 200m butterfly race on Tuesday morning.

The 21-year-old Zhang won the silver of men's 400 meters freestyle in 3:42.44 on Sunday, only 0.58 seconds slower than gold medalist South Korean Park Taehwan. Prior to Zhang's silver, the fourth position in the 50m freestyle won by Jiang Chengji in Atlanta 1996 was the best result by Chinese male swimmer at the Olympic Games.

As a 14-year-old lad, Wu grabbed two golds at the ninth Chinese National Games in 2001. One year later, the teenager defeated more heralded Japanese to bag home three golds from the 200m butterfly, the 400m individual medley and the 200m backstroke at the Asian Games.

In last year's Melbourne World Championships, Wu was second only to American phenom Michael Phelps, who keeps the event's world record at 1:52.09.

He also created his personal best of 1:54.82 at a national Olympic trials competition in March.The clocking could have placed him fifth in the event's world ranking this year.

Wu swam at 1:54.93, 1.23 seconds slower than Phelps did at the semifinal, and 2.84 seconds than the world record possessed by Phelps.

"Although I intended to reserve my strength for final, I felt unsatisfied with my performance this morning, half a second slower than I previously expected," Wu said, explaining that he failed to recover completely from last evening's heats and had a bad sleep last night.

The gulf of over 2 seconds seems to be formidable for Wu to challenge Phelps. The Chinese said that he was in full awareness that his personal best couldn't ensure him a medal.

"I hope I can swim at one minute and 54 seconds or so and be among the guys who stand on the podium tomorrow," Wu said.

"This boy has strong nerves and was born for big events like Olympic Games. As the competitors become stronger, Wu gets stronger," said Wu's coach Zhu Zhigen, adding that he was very confident that Wu's performance at the final on Wednesday would be much improved.

(Xinhua News Agency August 12, 2008)