World Aquatics Swimming Championships: Hong Kong to send 15-strong team; Chinese stars out
Siobhan Haughey will be out to win her fifth world title, while the Adams Chillingworth and Mak will be out to extend their ‘friendly rivalry’
Hong Kong will send 15 swimmers to compete at the World Aquatics Swimming Championships in Budapest in December, when Siobhan Haughey will be looking to win her fifth world title.
However, the tournament could potentially be without big names from mainland China, as Zhang Yufei, Pan Zhanle and Xu Jiayu are all set to sit out the event.
Among the seven male athletes forming part of the Hong Kong roster are experienced swimmer Adam Chillingworth and youngster Adam Mak Sai-ting, whose “friendly rivalry” has helped push both swimmers to new heights.
“Me and [Mak] have always been head to head, always exchanging Hong Kong records. I set the mark at the world championships in Melbourne in 2022, and that stood for a couple of years,” Chillingworth said. “But then Adam came back and broke it by, like, two seconds.”
In 2022, Mak broke the city’s 200-metre breaststroke short-course record twice, only for Chillingworth to set a new mark of two minutes and 7.13 seconds at the World Cup in Indianapolis in November that year.
One month later, Chillingworth topped his record, coming home in 2:06.46 at the world championships in Melbourne.
