Li Bingjie has written her name into history books with a new world record in the women's short course 400-meter freestyle at the Chinese Swimming Championships on Thursday. 

The 20-year-old sensation scorched down the pool in three minutes and 51.30 seconds to shatter the previous mark of 3:53.92 set by Australia's Ariarne Titmus at the 2018 World Championships. 

"I was so surprised. I didn't expect this result at all," beamed Li, who struggled to perform at her best at the 19th World Championships in June. "It proves that my training in the past two months has paid off and my efforts have not been in vain."

Li has been a shadow of her former self since breaking the Asian record to bag the 400m freestyle bronze medal at the Tokyo Olympic Games last year. 

She failed to make it to the finals in both the 400m and 1500m freestyle at the World Championships, and only finished fifth in the 800 freestyle final. 

With another record now under her belt, Li eventually rediscovered her top form and proved she is still one of the best swimmers in the world.

Earlier in the day, Olympic champion Zhang Yufei touched home in 23.82 seconds in the women's 50m freestyle, smashing the national record of 23.95 set by Zhu Menghui in 2018. 

"This is the first time I swam into 24 seconds in 50m freestyle, so I'm very delighted," said Zhang, who set the new Olympic record to clinch the women's 200m butterfly gold in Tokyo. 

"But at the same time, I was a little bit dissatisfied because my goal was to break the Asian record, and I was just 0.07 seconds shy of completing the goal." 

Both Li and Zhang will be title contenders at the upcoming World Swimming Championships (25m), which are set to take place from December 13-18 in Melbourne, Australia.