The French saw what the Chinese Pan Zhanle did to David Popovici! The final will be terrible

David Popovici also qualified for the grand final in the 100 meters freestyle, but only from the fifth position. Reactions from the international press came quickly, with the press in France providing the first views on the race won by Pan Zhanle, where David Popovici did not have the brightest performance.

However, the Romanian athlete can boast of yesterday’s performance, when he obtained the first gold medal for the Romanian team since this edition of the Olympic Games, in the 200 meters freestyle.

The French believe that the 100 meters freestyle final will be much more intense

David Popovici had a major performance last night after winning the gold medal in the 200m freestyle. The Romanian athlete was only in third place halfway through the race, and his chances for gold were quite slim, but he made a fantastic comeback at the end and won the race.

“Fresh winner of the Olympic gold in the 200 m freestyle, his first Olympic title won on Monday evening, the Romanian David Popovici swam in 47.66 seconds, the fifth time”, reported those from la1ere.francetvinfo.fr.

“China’s world champion Pan Zhanle showed a completely different face, started very strong and blocked the comebacks of David Popovici (47.66) and Jack Alexy (47.68). After the victories achieved by Kyle Chalmers in 2016 and Caleb Dressel in 2021, the final is expected to be very open”, captioned L’Equipe.

Much more relaxed performance from David Popovici in today’s semi-final

After revving his engines seriously yesterday, David Popovici was much more relaxed today. He also specified the fact that the recovery from yesterday’s race was quite long: “After last night I slept quite hard, anyway I went to bed late because I had all kinds of things to do: massage, the meal I ate late, anti-doping test. I rested as well as I could and I will rest tonight as well.”

David Popovici completed the race with the second time in his group, 47.66 seconds, behind China’s Pan Zhanle, who had a time of 47.21 seconds. Kyle Chalmers qualified from the first position (47.58), followed by Nandor Nemeth (47.61) and Maxime Grousset (47.63).