Siobhan Haughey wins a historic silver medal in the 200-meter freestyle at the Tokyo Olympics.
Swimming at the Summer Olympics – 200 Metre Freestyle
On Wednesday morning at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, Siobhan Haughey made history by being the first swimmer from Hong Kong to win an Olympic medal. She placed second in the women’s 200-meter freestyle final.
Haughey, who is only 23 years old, set a new Asian record and slashed nearly a full second off her previous best to place second, 0.42 seconds behind Australia’s golden girl Ariarne Titmus.
With her bronze medal performance in 1:54.70, Canadian swimmer Penny Oleksiak became the country’s most successful Olympian of all time.
The words “glad” and “excited” don’t even begin to describe how I feel right now. Haughey said, “I’ve worked hard for this for the past five years — I made the semi-finals five years ago [at the Rio 2016 Games].
When I entered this meet, I set a goal of qualifying for the final round. It means the world to me to be able to win a medal at last.
Haughey’s Swim on Tuesday set the bar Extremely high;
she was second quickest among the eight swimmers who made it to the final, behind only 20-year-old Titmus.
That race, she had been running slightly outside the world-record pace at the 100-meter mark, and she ended up finishing second to Titmus in 1:55.16. (1:54.82).
Katie Ledecky, a swimming superstar from the United States, finished third (1:55.34) in the opposite semifinal.
The final was still described as Titmus vs. Ledecky part two, despite Haughey’s efforts; the two heavy hitters had competed in the 400-meter freestyle on Monday morning, with the Australian capturing gold.
Perhaps that worked well for Haughey over in lane five.
Starting out first, Oleksiak led at the first turn, followed by Yang Junxuan of China and Haughey.
Earlier, the Hong Kong swimmer had shown why she was a gold favourite by breaking away in the second half of the race and setting a new world record in the 150-meter split.
As he had done in the semifinals, Titmus turned on the afterburners down the stretch and beat Haughey to the finish line by a narrow margin (1:53.50).
To defeat Haughey, it necessitated setting an Olympic record, which speaks a lot about the excellence of the Hong Kong athlete.
Haughey’s silver medal, combined with Edgar Cheung Ka-gold long’s in the men’s individual foil on Monday, made these Games the most successful in Hong Kong’s history.
The former University of Michigan star has announced that he will also compete in the 50-meter and 100-meter freestyle events; the heats for the latter will be held on Wednesday night.
Since Making her Olympic debut in Rio, Haughey’s Popularity has only Increased.
She improved from her fifth-place finish at the 2017 global championships in Budapest to a fourth-place showing at the 2019 championships in Gwangju, South Korea, missing the podium by a mere.01 seconds.
In addition, Haughey had an outstanding second season with the Energy Standard team in the International Swimming League before moving on to Tokyo.
Consequently, Haughey is now an Olympic silver medalist, some 18 years after first entering the water at the South China Athletic Association.
