Chinese swimmer Yu Zidi, 12, has become the youngest medallist in World Aquatics Championships history after earning relay bronze in Singapore.
The youngster, who will not turn 13 until October, swam in the preliminary rounds of the women’s 4x200m freestyle relay.
Though she did not compete in the final, a quartet of her teammates came home third behind a dominant Australia and the United States to earn a bronze medal to which Yu is entitled for her involvement in the heats.
It continues an excellent debut global championships for the swimming starlet, who narrowly missed out on individual medals in the 200m butterfly and 200m individual medley. She competes over double the medley distance later in the programme.
World Aquatics rules say that competitors have to be 14 or older to compete in their flagship championships unless they meet tough time standards, which a world-class Yu successfully did ahead of the event.
Brent Nowicki, the organisation’s executive director, suggested that they would look at their age rules again to ensure that they have the right measures in place for young athletes.
“I didn’t think I’d have this conversation, but now I think we have to go back and say is this appropriate?” he said this week in Singapore. “Is this really the right way to go forward and do we need to do other things? Put other guardrails up? Do we allow it under certain conditions? I don’t know the answer.”
Yu is the youngest medallist at a major international competition since Denmark’s Inge Sorensen, who won a breaststroke bronze medal at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.
