The Chinese women's swimming team has already won all the berths in the 16 events of the Beijing Games.

In addition to Qi's breaststroke events, China's women swimmers also have opportunities in other events, such as freestyle and butterfly. Young swimmer Zhu Qianwei won the last Olympic berth in women's freestyle and in the butterfly events, 16-year-old Jiao Liuyang, who finished fourth in the women's 200m, offers hope.

In the men's side, freestyler Zhang Lin is hoping to sparkle at middle and long distance events after grabbing three golds at the Swimming China Open.

The 21-year-old Zhang rocked the home crowd with a national record breaking performance in the 400m, slicing 1.23 seconds off a national record he set at a swim meet in Australia last December.

He also won the 1,500m race and led the Chinese team to a win in the 4x200 freestyle relay.

Finishing seventh at the 2003 World Championships, Zhang is China's first men's swimmer to reach the world's top eight in long distance events.

Last November, Zhang went to Australia to train with Denis Cotterell, former coach of long-distance king Grant Hackett, for three months and made fabulous progress there.

He rewrote his own national records in both the 400m and 1,500m at a swim meet in Queensland last December and became one of 10 elite male swimmers to beat the 1,500m 15-minute barrier last year.

"Zhang Lin's progress showed that he harvested a lot from overseas training," said Zhang Yadong, head coach of China's swimming team. "He will go for training in Australia again before the Beijing Games and his goal is to strive for medals at the Beijing Games."

Wu Peng, the world championships silver medalist in butterfly, is also a medal contender for the host country at the 2008 Games.

Although absent from the test event at Water Cube, Wu is looking forward to a gold medal at the Games.

"The results of the test events are not that important since most of the world's top swimmers were absent," said coach Zhang.

"Our goal at this stage is to experience the venue and give young swimmers more opportunities to compete with foreign athletes. We will decide the final entry list for the Olympics according to the results of a national competition next month and the form of the swimmers."