Sun Yang advances to 400m freestyle in National Championship

In the pool for China's National Swimming championships in Qingdao which also serve as the qualification trials for the FINA World championships. Nine hundred athletes from 25 teams are at the competition, and star Sun Yang eased into the final in one of his specialties, the men's 400-meter freestyle.

Sun and his coaching team came to train in Qingdao four days ago where he practiced twice after five weeks of training in Singapore. The three-time Olympic champion will participate in the 200-, 400-, 800-, and 1,500-meter freestyles. And in the 400 meters preliminaries, the 27-year-old has the best time of three minutes, 49.04 seconds. He will be expected to win the final tonight.

"I feel good and tried to be faster in the preliminary. I hope to do better tonight," Sun Yang said.

In the women's 200-meter medley, Zhengjiang's Ye Shiwen is the fastest as the double Olympic champion tops the heats with a time of two minutes, 14.81 seconds. Jiangsu's Zhang Yufei records the best time in the women's 100-meter butterfly with 57.83 seconds.