Yu Zidi, the 12-year-old Chinese girl that has taken the world by storm at the 2025 World Aquatics Championships, will leave Singapore with a prize for her feat, a bronze medal in women's 4x200m freestyle. Despite, she did not participate in the final, she swam in previous rounds and therefore she is also granted a medal.
Zidi also finished fourth in 200m individual medley and 200m butterfly, just six and 31 hundredths of a second to the bronze medal, respectively. All of that while being just 12: World Aquatics made an exception on their own rules (participants need to be at least 14 to compete) when they saw her incredible marks.
As the world amazes by the success of this child prodigy, who turns 13 in October, which is almost unprecedented (Zidi becomes the youngest swimmer in the history of the swimming championships to win a medal, breaking a record from 1936), an ethical debate arises on whether children so young should even be allowed to participate in the competitive world of sports elite.
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Her marks certainly indicate that she could be one of the greatest (in the Chinese championships earlier in 2025, she achieved times similar to the best in Paris 2024). Other world famous swimmers also started at as very young age, like Summer McIntosh, Katie Ledecky or Kyoko Iwasaki, who were 14 and 15 when they won championships and Olympic medals.
"In China, her participation is defended as part of a sporting culture that rewards excellence from an early age with economic and social compensation that extends to the athlete's entire family", reports El País. But 12 years old seems taking it too far, and many experts and pundits (at least in the western world) are worried about what a life of harsh training can do to the physical and mental health of a child.