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Disclaimer: Swim of the Week is not meant to be a conclusive selection of the best overall swim of the week, but rather one Featured Swim to be explored in deeper detail. The Swim of the Week is an opportunity to take a closer look at the context of one of the many fast swims this week, perhaps a swim that slipped through the cracks as others grabbed the headlines, or a race we didn’t get to examine as closely in the flood of weekly meets.
A 16-year-old National Record fell at the hands of Ilya Linnyk in the men’s 200 freestyle at the Ukrainian Championships, but another notable mark fell at the competition from one of the country’s younger swimmers.
Anton Denysenko, a 2008-born swimmer (birthday not confirmed but turning 16 this year) from the Rivne Region in Ukraine, put up a time of 2:03.65 in the final of the men’s 200 IM, knocking off his newly-minted 15-16 National Age Group Record.
Denisko came into the year with a lifetime best of 2:05.11 and has now been faster than that four times through the first four-plus months of 2024, going 2:04.39 in January at the CMCM Euro Meet in Luxembourg and following up with a 2:04.96 clocking at the Eindhoven Qualification Meet in April.
Denysenko went 2:07.16 in the prelims before dropping into the 2:03s in the final, where he was the runner-up to Vadym Naumenko, the National Record holder who touched in 2:00.88, just shy of his Ukrainian mark of 2:00.03 set last summer.
Prior to Denysenko’s emergence last year, the previous Ukrainian age group mark for 15-16s was set in 2011, when Alexander Vassiliev clocked 2:06.47 at the Summer Cup of Ukraine in Kharkiv.
For context, Denysenko’s swim would rank 22nd all-time in the U.S. NAG rankings for 15-16 boys.
Denysenko also set new best times in the 200 back (2:00.95), 400 free (4:03.35), 800 free (8:33.73) and 50 back (26.88) at the meet.
His 200 back time, which lowered his PB of 2:01.43 from the Eindhoven Qualification Meet, would be 26th in the U.S. age group rankings. The Ukrainian Age Group Record sits at a blistering 1:57.18, set by National Record holder Oleksandr Zheltyakov in 2022.
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