IRVINE: Park Tae-Hwan threw down the Asian Games gauntlet Friday with an impressive 400m freestyle victory at the Pan Pacific Swimming Championships.

The 20-year-old swimmer, who won South Korea`s first Olympic swimming gold with a scintillating victory over China`s Zhang Lin in the 400m free at Beijing, clocked the fastest time in the world this year of 3min 44.73sec to beat Canadian Ryan Cochrane (3:46.78) and Zhang (3:46.91).

Zhang had clocked the previous fastest time of the season of 3:44.91.

Park led after the first 100m, but Cochrane, the 1,500m free winner on Wednesday, had seized the lead through 200m and held it until Park made a strong move coming out of the 300m turn and powered into the lead.

"Good, it was a good result," said Park, whose Olympic glory was followed by a difficult season in 2009 in which he lost in the heats of the 400m freestyle at the world championships in Rome.

Park has been reinvigorated this year by training in Australia with coach Michael Bohl.

"Michael Bohl helped me a lot," said Park, noting that he benefitted not only from the training regimen but from the change of scenery.

His resulting improvement in form has him cast as a gold medal favorite at the Asian Games in in Guangzhou, China, in November. Park was just 17 when he won the 200m, 400m and 1,500m freestyles at the 2006 Asian Games.

Park said that after PanPacs he would be heading back to Korea, where it would be decided whether he would train further in Australia before the Asian Games.

BDST: 1309HRS, August 21, 2010