With the absence of Olympic and World champion Sun Yang, newly crowned World champion Xu Jiayu is going to lead a squad of 55 Chinese swimmers to take part in the FINA/airweave Swimming World Cup in Beijing, China, from November 10-11.
Xu, 22, edged London Olympic winner Matthew Grevers of the United States in the 100m backstroke final in Budapest in July, becoming China's first male swimmer to win a backstroke event at the World Championships.
"I'm going to swim in the 50m backstroke and 100m butterfly in the Water Cube this time," said the backstroke expert at the news conference on Thursday. "I hope to try different events and challenge my ability to compete two events in one day."
After grabbing a silver medal from Rio Olympic Games last year, Xu keeps making progresses with hard training. He was only 0.01 second behind the world record of the 100m backstroke in long-course as he created the Asian record of 51.86 seconds at the World Championships Trials in April.
His winning time of 52.44 seconds in Budapest was 0.04 seconds faster than veteran Grevers while defending champion and world record holder Ryan Murphy from the United States finished third.
Other World champions such as Swedish Sarah Sjostrom, Chad le Clos from South Africa and Hungarian Iron Lady Katinka Hosszu will also compete in the two-day competition at the Beijing Olympic Games swimming venue.
The 2017 FINA/airweave swimming World Cup is made up of eight stops and Beijing is the sixth, ahead of the last two stops in Tokyo and Singapore.