7th FINA World Junior Swimming Championships 2019
- 50-Meter Course
- Duna Arena, Budapest (Hungary)
- Pool swimming: Tuesday, August 20 – Sunday, August 25, 2019
- Heats 9:30am GMT+2 (3:30 am EDT / 12:30 am PDT)/ Semifinals and Finals 5:30pm GMT+2 (11:30am EDT / 8:30am PDT)
- Meet site
- Entries book
- FinaTV Live Stream (subscription required)
- Live results
Saturday, 24 August 2019
Tonight’s event lineup:
- Women’s 1500 Free – Fastest heat
- Men’s 100m Free – Semi-finals
- Women’s 100m Fly – Semi-finals
- Men’s 50m Fly – Final
- Women’s 50m Free – Semi-finals
- Men’s 50m Breast – Semi-finals
- Women’s 50m Back – Final
- Men’s 400m IM – Final
- Women’s 4x100m Free – Final
With only four individual and one relay final on Saturday, half of the evening will be spent earning spots in Sunday night’s finals session. We’ll have semi-finals of the men’s 100 free and 50 breast and in the women’s 100 fly and 50 free. Those semi-finals will be some of the most hotly-contested races of the evening, however.
Andrei Minakov of Russia and Adam Chaney of USA were the only sub-50s in the men’s 100 free field this morning, although the next 12 qualifiers were all faster than 50.5. Those include the third and fourth qualifiers, Ukraine’s Vladyslav Bukhov, the 50 free gold medalist, and Sweden’s Robin Hanson who earned silver in the 200 free.
European silver medalist Archie Goodburn was top qualifier out of heats in the 50 breast but he’ll be challenged going forward by Russia’s Vladislav Gerasimenko, the reigning European Junior Champion and the 100 breast gold medalist here in Budapest. We’ll see if the Americans can keep up with the Europeans in the sprints; Josh Matheny and Kevin Houseman placed second and third behind Gerasimenko in the 100 breast and qualified fifth and sixth for semi-finals.
USA’s Carson Foster will be going for the 200/400 IM sweep in tonight’s 400 IM final. He will be swimming in lane 5, having qualified second behind Russia’s Ilya Borodin (4:18.60). Foster owns the World Junior Record in this event, having gone 4:13.39 at U.S. Nationals. Now he’ll be gunning for Hugo Gonzalez’s meet record of 4:14.65.
It will be a battle of the Russians in the 50 fly final. Aleksandr Shchegolev (23.57) and Andrei Minakov (23.59) are within 3/10 of Michael Andrew’s Championship and World Junior Record of 23.22. The teammates will be in lanes 4 and 5. Also within shooting distance of that record, and on either side of the Russians in lanes 3 and 6 will be Luca Armbruster of Germany and Josif Miladinov of Bulgaria, both of whom qualified with 23.60 for the final.
Australia’s Lani Pallister comes into the meet seeded nearly seven seconds faster than the number two seed in the women’s 1500 free. She’ll be looking to add another gold medal to her trove, but the bigger question is, can she break another meet record? Her seed time is 16:06.84 and the meet mark is 15:59.51, set by Argentina’s Delfina Pignatiello in 2017. It seems quite likely that record will fall.
Gretchen Walsh will be aiming for the Championship Record in the 50 free in the semi-finals. She came into the meet with a PB of 24.85. The meet mark is 24.59, set by Rikako Ikee in 2017. Walsh was the second qualifier for semis, going 25.28 in heats. The top qualifier was Australia’s Meg Harris with 25.12.
The dynamic duo of Torri Huske and Claire Curzan continue to dominate the field in butterfly. They will each swim in lane 4 of a semi-final tonight as the only sub-59s in the field this morning. Three more swimmers broke a minute: Belarus’s Anastasiya Shkurdai (59.00), Canada’s Hannah Henderson (59.60), and China’s Qian Xinan (59.68). Shkurdai earned the silver medal in the 50 fly between gold medalist Huske and bronze medalist Curzan.
The 50 back looks to be one of the more exciting finals of the night. Canada’s Jade Hannah is looking for her third gold medal in backstroke events, having won the 100 back and 200 back resoundingly. Australia’s Bronte Job may put a wrench in the works, however. She came within .02 of the Championship Record of 27.81, set by Gabrielle Fa’amausili of New Zealand in 2015, in semi-finals and is the only sub-28 qualifier. Hannah went 28.20 in semis and will be in lane 5.