Sun Yang -- who might objectively be the best freestyle swimmer in the world -- pulled off a "miracle swim" even for his standards on Friday in the 4x200m freestyle relay at the 15th FINA World Championships in Barcelona.
Check out the video above. When Sun hits the water (lane 8, very bottom of the screen), his team's in fifth place and more than two seconds behind the third-place French. All he does is swim 200 meters in 1:43.96 and beat both the French (lane 6) and Japanese (lane 3) swimmers by a fingertip.
Remember swimmer Sun Yang at the London Olympics? He broke his own world record in the 1500-meter freestyle, and won another gold in the 400-meter free, joining Michael Phelps as the only male swimmers to win two individual titles.
With the success came endorsements and a hot girlfriend, but China's poster-boy swimmer now finds himself at the center of a scandal.
Sun Yang made history last night by becoming the first Chinese man to win an Olympic swimming event, beating defending champion (and favorite) Park Tae Hwan of South Korea in the 400-meter freestyle and setting a new Olympic record of 3:40:14 (video here). After the race, he straddled a lane buoy and let out a primal scream as the CCTV announcer called him a "Chinese manly man."
