China’s 4×200 freestyle relay team thought beating Canada to win bronze was a realistic target ahead of the women’s final on Thursday, so winning gold in a world record time was beyond their wildest expectations. The team of Zhang Yufei, who broke the Olympic record to win the 200m butterfly gold an hour earlier, Yang Junxuan, Tang Muhan and Li Bingjie took an early lead and fought hard to hold it, with Li fighting off a surging Katie Ledecky to keep ahead of the United States and clock a winning time of 7:40.33. “We didn’t expect to win the race because the Americans and Australians are so strong,” Zhang said, who only found out she had to swim in the relay after her butterfly race.
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