薛瑞鵬

English

Xue Ruipeng (born 20 March 1988) is a former Chinese breaststroke swimmer from Taiyuan, Shanxi, who swam for the Chinese national team and now coaches the Hong Kong, China swimming team. As an athlete he specialised in breaststroke: at the 2008 Beijing Olympics he swam the men's 100m breaststroke in 1:02.48 and did not advance from the heats, and at the 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games he clocked 2:12.25 in the men's 200m breaststroke to share silver with South Korea's Choi Kyu-woong behind Japan's Naoya Tomita, setting a Chinese national record in the process; that Asian Games silver was the highlight of his career. After retiring he moved into coaching, joining the Hong Kong Sports Institute as early as 2014 and taking up a post as a Hong Kong team coach from 2017, leading the squad at events including the 2nd National Youth Games in 2019 and the Hangzhou Asian Games in 2023. Familiar with both mainland and Hong Kong training systems, he helped bring mainland-experienced coaches into the Hong Kong set-up: in 2022 fellow Shanxi native Cao Yue came to Hong Kong at his invitation to join the coaching staff. At the Hangzhou Asian Games he travelled with the Hong Kong, China delegation as a swimming coach alongside Fu Yanhao and Fan Wai-tim, and as a former international who has worked in both systems he is an important member of the coaching team familiar with mainland training methods.