18-year-old Korean swimmer Hwang Seon-woo became the first Korean athlete to advance to the final of this event by setting new Asian and world junior records in the 100m freestyle semifinals of the Tokyo Olympics.
Hwang Seon-woo set an Asian record of 47.56 seconds in the men's 100m freestyle semifinal held at the Aquatics Center in Tokyo, Japan, and advanced to the final, where 8 people competed for 3rd place in group 1 and 4th out of 16 people.
Hwang Seon-woo shortened the previous Asian record of 47.65 by 0.09 seconds, set by Tao Ning of China at his home tournament in October 2014, and broke the world junior record by 0.01 seconds.
The previous world junior record was set by Andrei Minakov of Russia in October of last year at 47.57.
With this, Hwang Seon-woo became the athlete holding the world junior record in two events, following the Korean record and the world junior record at 1:44.62 in the men's 200m preliminaries on the 25th.
Hwang Seon-woo is the only Korean athlete to hold the world record in swimming in both junior and senior.
The freestyle 100m world record is 46.91 seconds held by César Cielo of Brazil.
The freestyle 100m final will start tomorrow (29th) at 11:37 am.
Hwang Seon-woo set a new Korean record of 47.97 seconds in the preliminary match held yesterday afternoon, ranked 6th out of 70 players, and settled into the semi-finals where 16 players compete.
Hwang Seon-woo's qualifying record was 0.07 seconds shorter than the previous Korean record of 48 seconds 04, which he had set in the national team selection match in May.
In the semifinals, Hwang Seon-woo broke the Korean record, the Asian record, and the world junior record again and wrote a new history.
(Photo = Yonhap News)