Chinese prodigy Ziyi Yan had to wait for over a year to showcase her talent on the biggest world stage. At just 17, age restrictions barred her from participating in the 2025 World Championships. A day after turning 18, she announced herself to the world at the Xiamen DL with a record-smashing throw and immediately set her eyes on an 18-year-old world record.

Ziyi Yan delivered the biggest performance in Diamond League history, winning the women’s javelin in Xiamen with a 71.74-meter throw. The result broke the Diamond League record and also set a new world U20 record.

Before Yan’s throw, the Xiamen Diamond League meeting record stood at 64.75 meters, which was set by Greece’s Elina Tzengko in 2025. Yan did not just beat it; she pushed it into a completely different range. The performance also moved the Chinese teenager to No. 2 on the all-time list behind only Barbora Spotakova’s world record of 72.28 meters from 2008.

Entering the meet with a personal best of 65.89 meters, Ziyi Yan improved by nearly six full meters in a single competition. After the throw, Yan reflected on her mindset and revealed her next goal.

“Now I am more relaxed. Of course, I was more than thrilled to see the result, which I’ve been looking forward to for so long. I finally made it. What I want for myself now is consistency. A flash in the pan is not what I want; I don’t want this 71.74 to be just a one-time thing. WR wasn’t in mind before. Like today, my goal was to maybe try targeting the Area Record, but now, I think I can push harder. I will see how it will go for the next couple of years and prepare for breaking the WR.”

Norway’s Sigrid Borge finished second with a season-best 65.00 meters, while Serbia’s Adriana Vilagos took third at 63.64. Olympic silver medalist Maria Andrejczyk placed fourth with 62.51, and Olympic champion Haruka Kitaguchi ended seventh at 60.08.

However, even after her win, which showed her rise, Ziyi Yan also highlighted a quieter facet of her journey, the 2025 World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, where she was ineligible to compete.

Ziyi Yan’s rapid rise before missing the 2025 Worlds

Ziyi Yan’s success has been swift and steady. It started with a triumph at the 2024 World U20 Championships with a 63.05m throw, as she entered the list of most exciting young javelin throwers. She continued to break the world U20 record several times and set new limits again in 2025. One of her most notable performances was in March at the Chengdu invitational meet, where she hit 64.83m.

She also placed fifth at the Shanghai Diamond League with 60.54m, before going on to win the Chinese Athletics Championships with 65.89m, setting another world U20 record in the process, despite dealing with an ankle issue. By then, she was already ranked third in the world in women’s javelin and seen as a real threat for the Tokyo World Championships, but she never stepped onto that stage!

Throwing events have minimum age requirements set by World Athletics, which prevented Yan from taking part. It was a strange situation for Yan, close enough to the world’s best to be in contention for a medal but still too far away to risk too much at such a young age.

And recently, Ziyi Yan reflected on it with a calm perspective rather than frustration. “Not being able to compete in the World Championship and the National Games last year because of my age was definitely a bit sad, but on the other hand, I felt it was a blessing for me to have more time to prepare for a really good version of me to the spectators.”

Now, after announcing herself in Xiamen, that missed moment feels less like a barrier and more like part of a longer build, one that is only starting to unfold at a senior level.