Pan Zhanle smashes his own world record on the way to winning the men's 100m freestyle on Wednesday, finishing in 46.40 sec and securing Team China's first swimming gold of the Paris Games. WEI XIAOHAO/CHINA DAILY/REUTERS

Sure, it's a little early to make such bold proclamations, but freestyle swimmer Pan Zhanle's Paris heroics have immediately thrust his name into conversations about China's sporting immortals.

By breaking the world record in a sprint event long dominated by Western athletes, the teen sensation has left fans marveling at the emergence of a new, waterborne Liu Xiang, after Pan snatched up the coveted gold medal in the 100m freestyle final in the Paris pool on Wednesday, bringing back fond memories of Liu's epic 110m hurdles win at the Athens Games 20 years ago.

The magnificence of Pan's incredible 46.40-second world record swim, which secured Team China's first swimming gold medal in Paris on the fifth day of the Games has, as many claimed, also matched track legend Su Bingtian's feat of making the 100m final at the Tokyo Games three years ago.

The young phenom, who turns 20 on Sunday, took pride in joining his senior track stars as stereotype breakers.

"For myself, I haven't come to terms with it yet," Pan said of the gold medal's significance after the final at the Paris La Defense Arena. "My life goes on, for sure, and I will continue training and swimming."

"But, for Chinese swimming, and for my country, I think it's huge to prove that Chinese athletes can also prevail in another event we were not so good at in the past."

Boasting a strong start and a stunning second-split push, Pan touched first in Wednesday night's final, with a commanding 1.08-second lead over runner-up Kyle Chalmers of Australia. Bronze winner, David Popovici of Romania, finished a mere one hundredth of a second behind Chalmers.

To put that into perspective, Pan did it in what is being called a "slow pool" — built shallower than normal, at 2.15 meters in depth, resulting in more turbulence and bigger waves that athletes and coaches have blamed for slower-than-expected times in Paris.

Pan's new mark for the 100m free was the first swimming world record set at this summer's Games, making him the first male swimmer so far to eclipse a world record in 2024.

Yet, none of this was even imaginable less than three years ago, when Pan made his international debut at the 2021 short-course world championships in Abu Dhabi.

Failing to make the finals in any of the events he contested, Pan had to watch among the spectators, later self-effacingly changing the name of his social media account into "onlooker in the stands".

Since then, though, he's not missed any individual final at any major meet he has entered, nor has he let any opponent take him lightly again.

Overlooked talent

Relatively unknown to the world before Paris, Pan's meteoric rise started at his first long-course meet, the 2022 worlds in Budapest, where, at 17, he tied the Chinese national record set by 2015 world champion Ning Zetao with a sublime semifinal swim of 47.65.

Despite being overshadowed by then world-record holder Popovici, Pan still managed to give the Romanian prodigy a scare by following him shoulder-to-shoulder in the final's first split, before finishing fourth, just 0.21 sec behind the winner.

Following that Budapest launch, Pan fired his boosters, fueled by discipline and hard work supported by science and technology, such as underwater monitoring and analysis in training, which propelled him higher among the elite ranks of the sprint event, further raising expectations that even better results could be on the horizon.

A year later, by the time the world championships in Fukuoka, Japan, rolled around, Pan had started beating Popovici. In the 100m final, Pan maintained his scintillating pace, finishing fourth in a new Asian record time of 47.43, beating the Romanian star by 0.4 sec and placing just one hundredth of a second off the podium.

Powered by Pan, Team China won both men's free relays and the mixed 4x100m free relay. Combined with victory in the women's 4x200m free relay, it was the country's best-ever collective result at the long-course worlds.

A star had been born, but, as he continued his ascent, most eyes were focused on other stars in the swimming firmament.

Pan flew under the international radar until the all-important Olympic year arrived, landing in some style at February's worlds in Doha, where he broke the 100m world record for the first time in a surprising fashion.

Out of blue, in the men's 4x100m relay on Feb 12, Pan wowed the capacity crowd at the Aspire Dome by clocking 46.80 in a strong leadoff leg, shaving 0.06 sec off Popovici's previous record and leaving the on-site commentary team in awe. "We still have a race to complete here", the loudspeaker shouted in disbelief.

Wednesday night in Paris, Pan convinced even his strongest critics in the pool, and made sure that no one is looking elsewhere now.

Popovici, asked by some media how insanely, or perhaps suspiciously, fast Pan's swim looked, said it's all reasonable as long as Pan is working hard in the right direction. "I think we can go even faster.

There are people now alive, and who are swimming, who can do it. It's just a matter of putting it together and doing it at the right moment," said Popovici, who will turn 20 next month.

"This is only motivation for us. I mean, we can't be mad, we can only congratulate him. This is what sports is."