Challenges ahead

The outlook for China's men is not so promising, with the program as yet unable to find a reliable successor to the banned Sun.

Declining world champion Xu Jiayu finished fifth in Tuesday's 100m backstroke final.

Xu, a 25-year-old native of Zhejiang province, has been struggling to regain his form due to multiple injuries since winning back-to-back world titles from 2017-19.

As China's only active individual world champion in men's swimming besides freestyle star Sun, Xu managed to recover in time for the Olympics, but the long hiatus from international meets due to the pandemic appeared to take a heavy toll on his consistency in the highly competitive sprint event.

Although touching in his best time of the season (52.21) in the final, it was not enough to fend off tough rivals representing the Russian Olympic Committee, the US and Italy, as Xu failed to follow up his silver-medal performance at the 2016 Rio Games with another podium finish.

"Compared to the women's team, I have a bigger concern for the men because so far we haven't seen any younger swimmers step up and take the baton from the older generation," said Wu Peng, a former 200m butterfly silver medalist at the 2007 worlds.

"With the next Games only three years away, I hope the Chinese men's program can draw inspiration from the women's success in Tokyo to keep nurturing some medal contenders for Paris 2024."