China’s 13-year-old swimming prodigy

Yu Zidi made history last year aged 12 when she became the youngest-ever medalist at the swimming world championships. Now a teenager, she headlines China’s bid for Asian Games domination and has Olympic glory in her sights.

The 13-year-old school girl with a pixie hair cut stunned the sporting world last year with a series of eye-popping times.

At the last year’s World Aquatics Championships in Singapore she helped China reach the 4x200m women’s freestyle relay final. She did not swim in the final, but China came third, earning Yu a historic bronze for swimming in the heats.

China’s swimmer Yu Zidi prepares for the final of the women’s 200m butterfly swimming event during the World Aquatics Championships in Singapore on July 31 last year.

Photo: AFP

Yu just missed out on medals in the 200m and 400m individual medley events and the 200m butterfly, coming fourth in all three races.

In November last year at China’s National Games, having just turned 13, she clocked a blistering 2:07.41 in the women’s 200m medley for what was then an Asian record.

While training with the China team in Beijing, she told local media this month she was “excited” for her Asian Games debut.

“Train well, don’t slack off. Demonstrate the level of your training and work hard to break past yourself,” she said, according to state news agency Xinhua.

The Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya, Japan open on Saturday next week.

A coach, Ha Sinan, once described Yu with a Chinese saying that translates as “a newborn calf is fearless of tigers.”

However, the teenager has spoken of struggling to deal with the heavy load placed on her.

Yu grew up in the city of Baoding, about 150km south of Beijing.

She started swimming aged six and since then has juggled schoolwork with training.

“Being in class all day and still having to train was really tiring,” she said in January.

“Sometimes I was so tired I could fall asleep even while eating,” she said at an event celebrating Hebei province’s National Games wins.

Yu said she “never considered quitting” and always dreamed of being a national champion.

Yet during the tune-up to last year’s National Games she said the pressure of wanting to win the 400m medley nearly became too much.

“It was like a big stone that weighed on me and made it hard to breathe,” she said.

Yu eventually told her coach she wanted to do anything other than train.

Her coach told her to persevere and “believe in yourself,” she said. Yu went on to win four medals at the National Games.

Some in the swimming world have questioned the mental and physical impact of high-level training and competing on Yu at such a young age.

It seems certain that Yu would compete at the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics, when she will be 15, and on current trajectory would be a major medal threat.

She is aware that her success for someone so young has made international headlines, but she knows hard work outweighs innate talent.

In June she won the women’s 400m medley in 4:30.79 at China’s national championships, a time which would easily have earned her silver at the Paris Games in 2024.

“There is still a long road ahead,” she added.

“I will keep holding fast to my original dream, drawing strength from my team, to stand on the Olympic podium,” she said.