Ye Shiwen, China's youngest ever swimming world champion, survived a strong challenge by Li Xuanxu to win the gold medal in women's 400m individual medley at the Chinese National City Games here on Monday.

Ye, who came from nowhere to win 200m IM at the world championships in July, is agruably the biggest name in pool events at the National City Games, a quadrennnial event held for athletes aged under 20, while Li was a triple gold medalist at the last National City Games in 2005.

Ye and Li got out to a quick start and went neck-and-neck for most of the race. Ye manged to set up a tiny lead on the last leg of freestyle, her specialty, and touched home in 4 minutes 33.66 seconds, her personal best time.

Li, 17, was just 0.67 seconds behind and had to settle for the silver medal.

"Congratulations to Ye. Today, she was the better of us," said Li, who represents Changsha. "I didn't swim well on the breaststroke leg and I need to improve it in future."

Less than half an hour after the 400m IM final, Ye anchored Hangzhou to victory in the women's 4x100m freestyle relay in 3:43.39. Dalian was second in 3:45.02.

Wang Shun took the men's 400m individual medley title in 4:14.09, more than two seconds shy of his own Asian record set last month in the Chinese national championships.

Changsha's Huang Chaosheng, who led at the halfway mark, finished second in 4:15.34.

In the men's 400m freestyle, Li Junqi of Zhengzhou led throughout the race and clocked a fastest time of 3:47.53.