This 13-Year-Old Is Faster Than An Olympic Champion

In 2015, Katinka Hosszu set the 200m IM world record. Yu Zidi was two years old. In 2026, at just 13, she swam faster than Hosszu ever did — and faster than the time that won Olympic gold in Paris. As a swim coach, I went through everything that's actually documented about her: how she started, where she trains, how much she really swims, and the habit that research says separates future elite swimmers from the rest. Plus a split-by-split comparison with Summer McIntosh's world record. If you like swimming explained with real data instead of hype — subscribe. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ SOURCES Yu Zidi's date of birth — World Aquatics (2025): https://www.worldaquatics.com/news/43... Her start at age 6, club, first coach and training camp — Hebei Provincial Sports Bureau (2025): https://sport.hebei.gov.cn/m/view.php... Asian Games 2026, 200m IM in 2:06.10 — General Administration of Sport of China (2026): https://www.sport.gov.cn/n4/n30039867... Training diaries, race summaries and "I don't think I'm a genius" — Xinhua / Beijing News (2026): https://m.bjnews.com.cn/detail/179021... Breaststroke, turns and learning from McIntosh — World Aquatics (2025): https://www.worldaquatics.com/news/44... Race report and splits — Swimming World (2026): https://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com... Summer McIntosh's 2:05.70 world record — Swimming Canada (2025): https://www.swimming.ca/blog/summer-m... Paris 2024 Olympic 200m IM gold, 2:06.56 — Team Canada (2024): https://olympic.ca/2024/08/03/mcintos... Reflection and evaluation in young swimmers (157 swimmers, age 12–21) — Post et al. (2022), Psychology of Sport and Exercise: https://research.rug.nl/en/publicatio... Mental practice meta-analysis (37 studies) — Toth et al. (2020), Psychology of Sport and Exercise: https://research.tus.ie/en/publicatio... ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ABOUT THE FOOTAGE Short clips of competition footage (a few seconds each) are used for commentary, analysis and education only. This video does not re-upload or replace any race broadcast — no full races are shown, and every clip is edited into my own commentary with my own graphics. To watch the races themselves, please use the official World Aquatics and Olympic channels. All rights to the original footage belong to their owners. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Z-Pulse Swimming Academy — swim coaching near Nice, France #swimming #yuzidi #summermcintosh