Russian swimmer Rozalia Nasretdniova has broken the Junior World Record in the girls’ 50 fly at the 2014 Youth Olympic Games on Wednesday. She swam a 26.26 in the final to win gold, which beat out the 26.32 “baseline standard” done by fellow Russian Svetlana Chimrova at the 2013 Junior World Championships.
Chimrova has graduated to the senior Russian team by age (though it’s not clear that the Russians have valued one meet over the other), and finished 11th in the same event at that meet in this week with just a 26.62 – slower than Nasretdniova’s time. If done in the right heats, Nasretdinova would have been good enough to sneak into the European final as the 8th seed – a final that as it is, was without any Russians.
Russia’s official Junior Records are for 16 & unders, and Nasretdinova is 17, so she doesn’t qualify for that. She does, however, qualify for coming in .02 seconds short of Chimrova’s overall National Record of 26.24 that was set in Moscow in May of this year.
Those two should have many battles to come in the next few years, and are the future of Russian women’s swimming.