The opening day of the Kazan World Swimming Championships is getting closer and closer, and FINA has begun to update the relevant information frequently. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

FINA's official website: "Beautiful Kazan is ready, and you, are you ready?" water-is-our-world！ ”

"The Kazan Swimming World Championships is the largest number of participants in history and the largest number of events, thanks to the careful organization of the Russian organizers, this will be a wonderful World Championships!"

"Remember the 2013 World Championships in Barcelona? The Duke of China and the American Flying Fish shine in Barcelona, and Duke and Franklin have won a total of 20 gold medals at the World Championships in Barcelona, and now, they are about to arrive in Kazan, will the legend continue to be written? ”

"After a vote at the FINA General Assembly, Mr. Duke and Ms. Missy Franklin are now appointed as the new FINA ambassadors for a period of two years. I believe that these two Laureus winners can make swimming a new frenzy around the world through their good image and brilliant achievements! ””

On July 23, the day before the opening of the World Swimming Championships in Kazan, FINA held an official press conference at the World Championships Media Center, attended by Chinese male swimmer Du Ke and American female swimmer Franklin.

Duke and Franklin are the famous male and female brushes in the international swimming world in the past two years, and they have won the Laureus Best Male and Female Athlete awards together. The two ambassadors of the last issue were American male swimmer Lochte and Swedish female swimmer Soström.

Duke and Franklin were smiling, facing reporters and cameras from all over the world, and shouted the slogan together: "water-is-our-world!" ”

Two new ambassadors, a man and a woman, are officially inducted.

"water-is-our-world" is the official English slogan of FINA, which translates as "Dream Water World" and Chinese swimmers as "I am water, therefore I am".

It's all too common for U.S. swimmers to serve as FINA ambassadors, and for more than a decade, there has been no shortage of U.S. swimmers in every edition.

Luo Xuejuan, the Chinese women's queen of frogs, has served as the image ambassador of FINA, but no Chinese male swimmer has ever done this job, because the previous Chinese male swimmers were not of sufficient grade. Sun Yang has won Olympic gold medals and World Championships gold medals, but Lochte has won more than him, so Lochte is more influential in the international swimming world.

Duke took Rochette's gun, and Rochette is not as popular as Doucet now.

Speaking of Rochette, Duke naturally remembered another American male swimmer, who asked Franklin, "Michael didn't come to Kazan?" "Michael is referring to Michael Phelps.

Franklin shook his head: "A few months ago, he was caught by the police for drunk driving, and then banned by the United States Swimming Association from competing in the World Championships. ”

After speaking, Franklin also showed his mobile phone to Duke: "Look, Michael is very decadent now, I really feel sorry for him." ”

Images on Mr. Franklin's phone show Phelps walking out of a Maryland courtroom with a beard and a much older face. Once a spirited teenager and still the most decorated Olympic gold medalist, Phelps now looks like an unemployed and widowed middle-aged uncle.

After retiring after the London Olympics, he made a comeback in April 2014, and not long after his comeback, Filipino caused trouble again, and drunk driving is not a trivial matter in the United States, so Phelps was banned and could not come to Kazan.

"Hopefully he'll pick himself up and look forward to seeing Michael Phelps in Rio." Duke said that he had been in the swimming world for several years and had yet to meet Phelps in reality.

Franklin looked at Duke and smiled silently, and some words were not easy to say: When Michael cheered up, you were so cruel to him, right?

……

The Chinese swimming team was the last of all the teams of the Chinese Swimming Corps to arrive in Kazan, and they arrived in Kazan five days ago.

Kazan is located in central Russia, more than 700 kilometers from Moscow, and is the eighth largest city in Russia.

There is a 5-hour time difference between Kazan and China, and the players of the Chinese team have almost fallen into the jet lag, and they will do a big game just after the start of the game.

On July 24, the Kazan World Swimming Championships officially began.

Before August 2, diving, water polo, flower swimming, open water swimming and other events will be carried out.

The performance of the Chinese diving team is still fantastic, and the Russian Huayou team, which is fighting at home, cannot find an opponent.

The U.S. swimming team has always been the dominant player in swimming, but no one has ever called the U.S. swimming team the "dream team", and it is the American basketball team that can be called the "dream team". The Chinese diving team and the Russian Huayou team have long been called the dream team, which shows the dominance of these two teams in their respective fields.

In terms of water polo, if Yugoslavia does not disintegrate, then the Yugoslav team is definitely a water polo dream team, Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and other water polo teams are all world powerhouses, if these countries form a team, it is awesome, it can be called invincible in the world.

All in all, the battle before August 2 was as follows: China dived to dominate the crowd, Russia Huayou was alone and sought defeat, the former Yugoslavia water polo was slaughtered, and countries in open water were fighting.

In anticipation, the most important event of the World Championships, swimming, started on August 2.

On August 2, at 9:30 a.m. local time in Kazan, the first swimming event to start was the men's 400-meter freestyle preliminaries.

In the World Championships and Olympic Games, the gold medal in swimming is often the 400 or 400 mixed event.

There is no semi-final for the 400-meter and above individual events, and the preliminaries are directly followed by the finals, and the 400 self and 400 mixed are more ornamental than the 800 self/1500 self, so the two 400-meter individual events are usually arranged on the first day of the swimming competition, with the preliminaries arranged during the day and the finals at night.

The Kazan Arena, the main swimming pool of the World Championships, can accommodate 15,000 spectators, which is comparable to the audience capacity of the Water Cube in China.

In the pool at the Kazan Arena, swimmers from all over the world are battling it out for a place in the final – the men's 400 free group 2 heats are underway.

The men's 400 self-preliminaries are divided into 7 groups, 1~5 groups are slow groups, and 6 groups and 7 groups are fast groups.

The contestants ranked 1~16 in the registration score are randomly divided into two groups of 6 and 7, and the other contestants are randomly divided into 1~5 groups.

Seventy-eight fifty-six, these 56 men's 400 free players will compete for eight finals places through one shot in the preliminaries, and the top eight players in the preliminaries will advance to the finals in the evening.

At this time, the first 5 groups of competitions are all over, and the fastest player swims a time of 3:47.98, and the strength of the slow group players is a little worse after all, and the fastest player in the middle of the slow group swims 3:47.98, which is difficult to get the top eight.

The 6th group of games began, this group was a fast group, and from this group, the awesome characters came out one after another.

Sun Yang, the champion of the London 2012 Olympics and the 2013 World Championships, was in lane 6 in Group 6 and swam 3:45.38.

In terms of preliminaries, it is normal for Sun Yang to swim more than 3 minutes and 45 seconds, but he did not win the first place in the group. Great Britain's James Gay in lane 2 won the group with a time of 3:45.10.

In the past year or so, a bunch of young goblins around 20 years old or even less than 20 years old have emerged in the international men's swimming scene, among which British breaststroker Adam Peaty and middle-distance freestyle swimmer James Gay are the most eye-catching.

James Gay beat Sun Yang and won the first place in Group 6, and the overall score in the preliminaries was also James Gay temporarily ranked first, and Sun Yang ranked second.

Next up is the final group of Group 7, a group of eight players who have been concentrated in the standby area and are waiting for instructions to play.

Duke is in Group 7, and he's chatting with an old demon.

This old demon is Germany's Biedermann, who is the old comrades who debuted with Phelps and Rochette.

Biedman set the men's 400 free world record of 3:40.07 at the '09 World Championships in Rome, a world record held until April 2015, when Duke set a new record of 3:38.51.

An old comrade like Biederman, who was nearly thirty years old and still fighting on the front line, Duke expressed his respect to him. Duke is '93 years old, and he's not young in today's men's swimming. Biederman, a post-80s generation, can still insist on fighting in the pool and can maintain a good competitive state, which can be called an old demon.

Duke is famous, and swimmers from all over the world know him. At the 2013 World Championships, FINA also reorganized Duke, and at this year's World Championships in Kazan, no one dared to rectify Duke, and FINA hired Duke as the image spokesperson of FINA.

There are eight players in Group 7 of the men's 400 self-preliminaries, and in addition to Du Ke, there are seven foreign players, and six of these seven foreign players are around Du Ke and have a warm exchange with Du Ke.

There was only one exception, who didn't seem to fit in well, and he stayed alone in the corner of the standby area, not saying a word, and looked at Du Ke's group coldly.

Duke glanced at the contestant in the corner, and he saw that he was about 1.90 meters tall, with a swimming cap and goggles on, and listening to music with earplugs in his ears.

The country initials on the swimmer's cap are AUS, and his last name in English is: Horton

“horton？ Translated into Chinese should be Horton? Who is this goods, I didn't get his information before the game, and no one translated his Chinese name for him, so it's probably a little transparent. Duke glanced at the Australian and didn't pay much attention to him. This kind of small role, Duke is too lazy to pay attention to. (To be continued.) )