Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, December 21, 2021: Hong Kong China’s Siobhan Haughey was named female swimmer of the meet at the FINA World Swimming Championships (25m) on Tuesday, December 21.
Haughey, 24, won two gold medals and one bronze medal, setting a short-course world record in the 200m freestyle and a championship record in the 100m freestyle, and finished third in the 400m freestyle.
Haughey, a graduate from the University of Michigan in the United States, had won two Olympic Games silver medals for Hong Kong at Tokyo 2020, in the women’s 200m freestyle and 100m freestyle.
Kliment Kolesnikov (Russia Swimming Federation) was crowned best individual male swimmer of the meet, with Japanese all-rounder Daiya Seto in third place for his two gold medals in the 200m and 400m individual medley events.
USA was named best team and finished top of the medal charts with 30 medals (9-9-12), ahead of Canada (7-6-2-15) and Italy (5-5-6-16).
China finished in sixth place with 4-1-2-(7), Hong Kong eighth with 2-0-1-(3), Japan in equal ninth place with 2-0-0-(2) and Korea joint 15th with 1-0-0-(1).
The other Asian gold medals were won by:
*Hwang Sun-woo (Korea), men’s 200m freestyle
*Daiya Seto (Japan), men’s 200m individual medley and 400m individual medley
*Li Bingjie (China), women’s 400m freestyle and 800m freestyle
*Tang Qianting (China), women’s 100m breaststroke
*Zhang Yufei (China), women’s 200m butterfly.
There were four world records in Abu Dhabi, 11 championship records and five junior world records.
History was made in Abu Dhabi as 28 nations featured on the podium, a new record since the 26 in 2002.
The stage is now set for the 19th FINA World Championships in Fukuoka, Japan next May when all six aquatics disciplines will feature.